Memes

Best practice

• Memes are generally considered to be, at best, a grey area in Australia. Depending on the situation, use of an existing meme could be considered copyright infringement of the underlying copyrighted work. Be aware of potential infringement in this space.
• Only use memes in classes/Canvas where they directly relate to the learning objectives/content of the course. Where use of a meme directly relates to your course content, such as analysis of cultural trends or political campaigns, etc., reproduction of memes may be covered under the educational statutory licence (see the tab above).
• To share memes under the statutory licence, provide source details (via Know Your Meme or cite the original image).
• There can be issues when sharing memes in Canvas that were created by students under fair dealing, due to potential incompatibilities between fair dealing and educational licensing. Where students are asked to create memes or GIFs for a course task, refer them to the curated lists of suitably-licensed images to help with later shareability in courses and elsewhere. Images not requiring attribution are the best choice (see below for an example).
• Confirm platform terms before adding memes to posts on social media and messaging apps.

To learn more, access the Memes copyright guide (PDF).

Original image via Unsplash, used under licence