PERCEPTION OF JOURNALIST ABOUT COPYRIGHT ISSUES IN REPORTING

1.1 Introduction

Copyright is a legal terms used to describe the rights that creators have over their literary or artistic works. Works covered by copyright range from books, music, paintings, sculpture and films (Wipo, 2021). As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Research hypothesis and questions, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.

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1.2 Background of Study

Copyright holders are trying to create micro-licensing models. More than two dozen major media companies, including the Associated Press, McClatchy, Hearst and the New York Times, launched News Right and are now under the umbrella of Moreover (Aufderheide, 2012). The service offers both licensing and analytics and, with its increased licensing efficiency, could be useful both to those who do not wish to make their own fair use determination and to those whose uses would exceed fair use (Moreover, 2013). Such services do not, of course, address situations in which a licensor might refuse to license.

Journalism on the other hand is the deliberate and conscious efforts to gather information, collating and analyzing data for the purpose of informing, educating and entertaining the people with a view of making an appropriate decision (Qasim Akinreti; 2007). Journalism is also an investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a large audience. Though there are many variation of journalism, the ideal is to inform intended audience, about topics ranging from governments and business organizations to cultural aspects of society such as arts and entertainment. The field of journalism include; editing, photojournalism and documentary (Wikipedia, 2021).

In the early 1990s, chat rooms and bulletin boards were forms of social media; in that they helped people connect with others and share interests. A little later, dating sites hooked together those looking for partners, and Classmate.com. let people connect with people they had known in high school and college. In the early 2000s, a site called Friendster was set up where people invited their friends to join and in turn, those friends invited other friends. The site was popular for a while but suffered from technical difficulties and fake profiles and began losing members. Some of those members went to My Space, which had actually started in 1999 but became better known in 2003. Its roots are a little muddy because it received financial and logistical support from another company called universe, and most of the early users were universe employees but Tom Anderson and Chris De Wolfe are given credit for much of the innovations and success of the site which built up to 115 million users worldwide. Members post bios, photos, blogs, videos, and other things that strike their fancy, and some TV programmes to air on My Space. In 2005, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation (parent of Fox Broadcasting) bought My Space for 580 million dollars.

Therefore, in Nigeria where the research was carried out, the activities that was conducted is to know the Perception of Journalist About Copyright Issues in Reporting.

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1.3 Statement of Problems

The influence of Copyrighted Journalist Report on social media in today’s world of communication, especially journalism cannot be over-looked. Since its arrival social media have certainly changed the way journalists work, how stories are developed and disseminated. Social media have had positive influences, without doubt, but there are also concerns about their influence on productivity and the disruption it could have on journalists “working patterns. Social media have created a dependency among those working in the media and many are unable to do without them. While journalists are growing more sophisticated in their use of social media, and are for instance, using a great variety of tools to source for news, some journalists are less positive about some of the ways social media affect their journalistic activities, their engagement with their audience, their productivity and the quality of their work.

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1.4 Aim and Objectives of Study

The aim of the study is to scrutinize the Perception of Journalist About Copyright Issues in Reporting. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows:

1. To know if the journalists in Enugu metropolis are exposed to Copyright Issues in Reporting.
2. To find out the type of social media tools journalists in Enugu metropolis
3. To examine the factors instigating the Copyright Issues in Reporting among Journalist in Enugu metropolis

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1.5 Research Questions

The study came up with research questions so as to be able to ascertain the above stated objectives. The specific research questions for the study are stated below as follows:

• Does journalists in Enugu metropolis exposed to Copyright Issues in Reporting?
• What are the types of social media tools journalists in Enugu metropolis prefer?
• What are the factors instigating the Copyright Issues in Reporting among Journalist in Enugu metropolis?
• How legislation could be implemented while still observing the separation between facts (not copyrightable) and stories?

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1.6 Research Hypothesis

In order to pursue the objective of this study, the following generalized statements have been designed to guide and aids in obtaining the result for the experiment to be conducted. For this work, the null hypothesis will be represented with H0 while the alternative hypothesis will be represented with hypothesis H1.

H0: There is no significant factor instigating the Copyright Issues in Reporting among Journalist in Enugu metropolis

H1: There is significant factor instigating the Copyright Issues in Reporting among Journalist in Enugu metropolis

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1.7 Significance of Study

This study will be of immeasurable importance to journalists, media organizations, news agencies, editors, lecturers and students in the field of journalism and mass communication as well as other researchers who would want to embark on same study as this. The study will help journalists to source useful information using social media networking tools as well as provide them with guide on how to write online stories. It will also help journalists to interact with their audience and identify their information needs. The study will also help journalists to have rarely embraced social media to do so in order to increase their productivity.

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1.8 Scope of Study

The study focuses on the Perception of Journalist about Copyright Issues in Reporting using Enugu metropolis in Nigeria as a case study.

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1.9 Limitations of the Study

During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:

1. Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
2. Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
3. Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
4. Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet, questionnaire and interview).

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1.10 Definitions of Terms

1. Social media: the term social media refers to the internet-based social networking website developed to specifically help people share their views and stay in touch with their friend, relatives and well wishers.
2. Journalism: this is the practice of writing, editing and disseminating of information to the public.
3. Modern Journalism: it is a term used to describe the new era in journalism where internet and computers are use in almost every journalistic activity.
4. Media: media in this study are Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and other social media networking tools which journalists use to disseminate information to a large heterogeneous audience.