INTERTEXTUALITY IN SELECTED NIGERIAN BLOGS

Abstract

Texts link up with one another for meaning-making in an intertextual manner. In the aftermath of pristine orality, intertextuality often has implications, one of which is plagiarism. Previous studies have examined the connection between intertextuality and plagiarism in offline literary and academic texts. However, the nature of intertextuality in blogs is largely undocumented. Intertextuality in the context of authorial ownership of texts in three Nigerian blogs was therefore examined in this study, with a view to exploring its potential implication for the viability of blogs as cultural artefacts. Intertextuality was adopted as framework, while a combination of netnography and survey approach was used as the design. To represent major blog types, Linda Ikeji‟s Blog (a filter blog), Geek Blog (a techie/topic blog) and Jarus Hub (a topic blog) were purposively selected based on audience traffic and cultural content. Primary data were generated through in-depth interviews with the three bloggers, a key informant interview with a copyright expert, and observation of the posts that appeared on the blogs from October 2016 to March 2017. A questionnaire was administered to 460 randomly selected, active blog readers through an online survey platform. The bloggers‘ and copyright expert‘s responses and the blog posts guided the exploration of the connection between intertextuality and plagiarism on the blogs. Standard methods were used to gauge the understanding of plagiarism as against intertextuality. Data were subjected to content analysis and descriptive statistics. The intertextual patterns identified in the blogs were adaptation, appropriation, parody, simulation, retro and pastiche. The bloggers engaged in intertextuality as a way of ensuring the viability of their blogs, but could not state categorically how they determined their intertextual patterns. Although instances of plagiarism, such as resourceful citer, photocopy, self-stealing and content scraping, were observed on the blogs, the bloggers were nonetheless confident that they neither plagiarised nor infringed on copyright. They based their argument on their submission that they always mentioned the sources of their borrowed texts. The credited sources were either explicitly mentioned in the blog posts or displayed as link anchors and hot texts. As shown in the blog posts, the borrowed texts originated largely from platforms where contents were generated by users and there was no authorial ownership of texts. The compromise of individual ownership of texts bore resemblance to a condition of pristine orality. The blog readers (54.1%) identified intertextuality in the blogs. Of these readers, 61.8% estimated that intertextuality occurred often on the blogs, and 75.1% appreciated bloggers‘ intertextual efforts because the practice made more information on politics, celebrities, information technology and entrepreneurship available to the reader. The bloggers used the blogs as cultural artefacts to share folklore. The selected Nigerian blogs are sites of hegemony and resistance with regard to authorial ownership and use of texts, thereby suggesting a quasi-pristine orality. There are, therefore, new paradigms of intertextuality beyond the literary categories in the virtual context.