Copyright Awareness among Future Media Specialists: Survey Results in Bulgaria

An essential component of the information society is intellectual property (IP) knowledge, in particular copyright and related rights. IP has become even more relevant with the increasing openings allowing people to create and promote their work in online media.

There are a lot of different versions of copyright surveys in Social Sciences in Bulgaria because the specialists in this field find their spheres of realization in different public institutions. As cultural and information institutions where using or producing information resources is the basis of their activity, specialists need to be well informed on IP protection, especially copyright (Trencheva & Denchev, 2016; Todorova & Trencheva, 2014; Todorova et al. 2014). However, a survey dedicated to copyright awareness among future media specialist had not been performed.

The paper presents the methodology and results of a survey which aims to establish, systematize, and analyse the current level of awareness about copyright issues among trainees in the media field.

The survey instrument was developed by the authors in order to collect data, regarding students’ knowledge, awareness levels and attitude of copyright issues. The questionnaire consists of 40 main questions in four panels.

The survey was conducted in nine universities in Bulgaria, among students in the public communications and information sciences, with specialties such as journalism, media, public relations, arts, and creativity. It was conducted from 1st April – 26th May 2021. The general aggregation, consists of 449 effectively surveyed Bulgarian students in Bachelor, Master and Ph.D degree programs. The study was done on the principle of systematic random selection with stratification to 10% of the students in the mentioned professional field. Data collection was carried out by Google survey.

The survey provides information on copyright literacy and the attitudes of young people to IP and was conducted at a time when the rights of authors and journalists were in focus and their value emphasized. In this sense, it can be assumed that the answers of the respondents indirectly influence the public debate on the IP topic. The analyzed information serves as a starting point for a model for increasing copyright literacy among future media specialists.

References

  • Todorova, T., Тrencheva, T., Kurbanoğlu, S., Doğan, G., Horvat, A., & Boustany, J. (2014). A multinational study on copyright literacy competencies of LIS professionals. In S. Kurbanoğlu et al. (Eds.), Information Literacy, Lifelong Learning and Digital Citizenship in the 21st Century, Second European Conference on Information Literacy, ECIL 2014, Dubrovnik, Croatia, October 20–23, 2014: Proceedings. Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS) 492 (pp. 138–148). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
  • Todorova, T., & Trencheva, T. (2014). Copyright literacy in memory institutions: Findings from scientific research project in Bulgaria. In Proceedings of the 3th International Conference on NPSE (pp. 169–172). Florence: PIXEL.
  • Trencheva, T., & Denchev, S. (2016). Intellectual property awareness of sulsit’s students: Survey results and curricula reflection. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference of E-Society (pp. 79–86). Vilamoura, Algarve: Portugal.

Tereza Trencheva, Evelina Zdravkova, Ivan Trenchev
University of Library Studies and Information Technologies, Sofia, Bulgaria

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