What is copyright? Communicating specialised knowledge on CBBC

The paper provides a qualitative investigation into the many ways in which exposition mediates exclusive knowledge about copyright to children in Key Stage 3 on the Bitesize and Newsround pages of the British Children’s BBC online platform (CBBC). The analysis moves from objective exposition in the COPYRIGHT article of OUP’s A Dictionary of Law, primarily intended for inclusion and knowledge transfer to late youth and adults, zooms in on the Bitesize sister directories on Copyright and intellectual property as a second step, and then concludes with discussion of a Newsround story about EU copyright law. The data suggests that the Bitesize pages are primarily expository texts. They make recourse to definitions and key facts about copyright, intellectual property and creative commons licences. The layout is neat and clean, static images play a minor role, and written texts address excellent readers using specialist terminology. This appears to addres the need to be brief, precise and concise in online revision materials designed for primarily pedagogic purposes. Instead, while still comprising expository passages for explanatory purposes, the Newsround page is designed to engage with the user and play on their curiosities. It focuses on what users are assumed to find meaningful, interesting and useful. Therefore, stimuli intended to encourage, realize and fulfil the communicative intention are present throughout, in the form of verbal interlocutive devices (Q/A patterns, first- and second-person style, exclamation marks, colloquialisms), and of images that arouse interest and curiosity. These might come as clever language play within memes, as ostensive stimuli that point to proximity and invite association with user-centred objects and familiar VIPs, and as ostensive stimuli that invite identification with the represented participant(s) and actions.