research is more than that. Anyone who finished a capstone project for a bachelors or master would know that. You may find the topic of research in other avenues as well. Research is formulating a hypothesis, investigating it with the gathering of data, analyzing the data and coming to a conclusion. Doing research by searching the internet or going to the library reading magazines and quoting those magazines is like calling a script kiddie a full-fledged hacker.
Maybe colleges or similar institutions may accept that now but when I did my initial project paper we were warned about what was and what wasn't research. I did help a friend out with her MBA in later years and it was a disaster. She had an F. Why? because she copied and pasted directly from the internet. No questions to the validity of the sources. Maybe that's why we are in this culture war?
i was just yanking your chain.
Everyone who actively searches for information and knowledge toward a specific purpose and with a defined question to answer is conducting research.
Research can be:
Approaching strangers in malls with an iPad or clipboard to get answers to a questionnaire;
Going to a factory for a tour;
Attending a political rally;
Interviewing lawmakers and other government officials;
Gathering raw data from direct sources and running your own analyses using statistical
and other accepted methods of viewing data -- nowadays visualization tools are very
popular as they go beyond charts and graphs to identify and visualize trends, relationships
and other patterns to better "see" how the information acts upon, and is acted upon, other data.
Talking story with people who lived the events you are reading about;
Watching well-sourced documentaries;
and so on.
And, yes, doing as much of that on the Internet as possible -- given the technology we have available -- is research. The 'Net makes all that faster, easier and allows for gathering much more data than ever before.
What someone does with that research is a totally different animal. We have but to mention Manmade Climate Change to see how research can be misused or interpreted using a bias or predisposed set of conclusions, or Joe Biden and Barrack Obama to see how words they found from other speeches can be plagiarized and used as their own. The internet just makes it easier for the abusers. However, tools are available that can quickly find the source material plagiarizers might have used.
I don't see any real difference between your friend stealing passages from the Internet and someone who copies passages from a bound encyclopedia -- other than the latter is a bit more work having to retype it as opposed to copy & paste.
