Crook, Charles; Nixon, Elizabeth
How internet essay mill websites portray the student experience of higher education Artikel
In: The Internet and Higher Education, Bd. 48, S. 100775, 2020, ISSN: 1096-7516.
Abstract | Links | BibTeX | Schlagwörter: empathy, essay mills, O, promotional communication, rhetoric, student experience
@article{Crook2020,
title = {How internet essay mill websites portray the student experience of higher education},
author = {Charles Crook and Elizabeth Nixon},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2020.100775
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1096751620300518},
doi = {10.1016/j.iheduc.2020.100775},
issn = {1096-7516},
year = {2020},
date = {2020-10-17},
journal = {The Internet and Higher Education},
volume = {48},
pages = {100775},
abstract = {Higher education is under mounting pressure to confront student practices of assignment outsourcing to internet services. The scale and buoyancy of this ‘essay mill’ industry has now been well documented, including its various marketing techniques for urging students to purchase bespoke academic work. However, the inherently suspect nature of such services demands that they adopt a particularly shrewd and empathic rhetoric to win custom from website visitors. In this paper, we investigate how such rhetoric currently constructs a critical version of the student's higher education experience. We present a thematic analysis of promotional text and images as found on a large sample of essay mill sites. Findings reveal how these sites promulgate a hostile and negative attitude towards higher educational practice. Yet these findings may also indicate where the higher education sector needs to reflect on its practice, not least in order to resist the toxic messages of essay mills.},
keywords = {empathy, essay mills, O, promotional communication, rhetoric, student experience},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Higher education is under mounting pressure to confront student practices of assignment outsourcing to internet services. The scale and buoyancy of this ‘essay mill’ industry has now been well documented, including its various marketing techniques for urging students to purchase bespoke academic work. However, the inherently suspect nature of such services demands that they adopt a particularly shrewd and empathic rhetoric to win custom from website visitors. In this paper, we investigate how such rhetoric currently constructs a critical version of the student's higher education experience. We present a thematic analysis of promotional text and images as found on a large sample of essay mill sites. Findings reveal how these sites promulgate a hostile and negative attitude towards higher educational practice. Yet these findings may also indicate where the higher education sector needs to reflect on its practice, not least in order to resist the toxic messages of essay mills.