Academic Integrity and Ghostwriting

Figure 1.

SUMMARY:

Academic integrity is a controversial subject within the news. It especially affects academics and students of all countries.

Plagiarism and fraud go hand-in-hand; when another's work is copied and the suspect takes credit for it. This is usually not premeditated; the students don't know or have not been taught the correct way to cite references or a student may feel under pressure in the task and take credit for someone else's work. Another form is collusion; this involves students working together on what is supposed to be an individual assignment. They then submit the same assignments as their own; this is considered cheating. Sometimes, students are required to get feedback from their peers, use that to improve their work and ultimately give in separate submissions; they may misunderstand and unintentionally work together throughout all the task. All universities have their own policies on plagiarism. For students to remain academically honest they must know types of plagiarism as well as use the following ways to avoid plagiarism (Grellier and Goerke, 2014, p.68-71):

Figure 2.

In recent years, there have been cases of famous personalities hiring a ghostwriter to write their books, and giving minimal or no credit at all to the writer.

Figure 3. Girl Online (2014)

One such case is the Girl Online (2014) controversy; Girl Online is a young adult (YA) fiction book by a YouTube personality, Zoella (real name: Zoe Sugg), it was her first published work. It may have been the marketing through herself or the publishers however full credit was taken by her for writing the book and there was no mention that her ghostwriter, Siobhan Curham had actually written the book. (Anderson, 2014). It turns out that this is a normal practice within public figures, namely celebrities; the celebrity will give an idea of their proposed work (fiction, biography etc) and the ghostwriter will write it. A contract is made between the celebrity and ghostwriter on how much credit will be taken (a mention of their effort).

REFLECTION:

Although, Anderson (2014) states "No, Penguin, instead, took the riskier route: it credited only Sugg. And — sorry, folks — that does, technically and actually, signal that Sugg wrote the book." In my opinion, following the ideals of Grellier and Goerke (2014) "you copy other people's words or ideas without acknowledging them correctly." (p.68), I would consider Zoella's ghostwriting fiasco; plagiarism. Sugg, herself, came up with the plot of the book but in the end, Curham was the one who actually wrote it; Sugg took credit for that as well. Curham hints that this venture was not handled as she would have preferred but under a contract, most likely a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), she has been silenced.

In this era, celebrities are directly able to converse with their audience through social media platforms; making their relationships almost personal with their fanbase. Sugg stated that she wrote the book on social media to her audience but once the controversy hit; they felt disappointed and deceived by her statements as they would have preferred to have known the truth directly from her (Anderson, 2014).

I believe that ghostwriters should be credited for their hard work and not just through an acknowledgement that doesn't state what they actually did. This is because their client can become paralysed on how to write a book which the writer ultimately delivers for them in the end.

Word Count: 553

REFERENCES:

Sources

Anderson, P. (2014, December 16). Girl Online Spooked: What The Zoella Ghostwriting Issue Tells Us. THOUGHT CATALOG. Retrieved from https://thoughtcatalog.com/porter-anderson/2014/12/girl-online-spooked-what-the-zoella-ghostwriting-issue-tells-us/

Grellier, J, & Goerke, V. (2014). Communications Toolkit (3rd ed.). Victoria, AUS: Cengage Learning.

Images

Figure 1. Typewriting Ghostwriter [Image] (n.d.). Retrieved from https://healthpsychologyconsultancy.wordpress.com/2014/09/24/ghostwriting-the-dos-and-donts/

Figure 2. Teacher's Discovery (n.d.). Plagiarism and Cite Sources Infographic Poster Set [Image] Retrieved from https://www.amazon.com/Plagiarism-Cite-Sources-Infographic-Poster/dp/0756047315#detail-bullets

Figure 3. Girl Online Book Cover [Image] (2014, November 25) Retrieved from https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22510983-girl-online