Lately I’ve been wondering about attribution on social media and platforms. It came about as I was discussing with a colleague whether we should give attribution to a certain image on a Libguide. Should we? Shouldn’t we? It is SO MUCH work to attribute every little thing! That made me think of social media and the millions of images, memes, gifs and videos that are posted daily. I then saw Meese and Hagedorn’s (2019) article listed in Module 5. The word “mundane” caught my eye. Most of our posted content really is mundane…does this mean we should be ignoring the issue of attribution? Does it really matter?
According to Meese and Hagedorn (2019, p. 1), it does. However, it appears our legal framework around copyright is unable to keep up with the ever changing nature of social media (Meese & Hagedorn, 2019, p. 1). It was interesting to read that in some fandom and creative online communities, contributors at the grassroots level have discussed and agreed upon attribution issues (Meese & Hagedorn, 2019, p. 1). It appears online communities are working at a very democratic, decentralised level, however it remains that most of us could fall foul of our current legal system even with a simple repost (Meese & Hagedorn, 2019, p. 3). I found it ironic to realise that social media is set up to increase our level of sharing, but this potentially exposes us to more infringement (Tan, 2018, as cited in Meese & Hagedorn, 2019, p. 4). I had never thought of this before.
Rather than being ‘mundane’, Meese and Hagedorn’s (2019) article got me thinking. How will I go about modelling correct attribution as a newbie TL next year? Do I need to pay more attention to Terms of Use/Service statements? Should I be exploring ways to attribute when I start my library’s Instagram or Twitter account? How can I address this with students who will immediately roll their eyes if I mention ‘copyright’ and ‘social media’ in the same sentence? I don’t have any answers yet, but in looking for them, I stumbled across the case study of Sam Groome and the “$12,000 tweet” (Hickman, 2021, p. 3). It gave me lots to think about!
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References
Hickman, B. (2020). The $12,000 tweet: A collision at the intersection of social media and copyright law. Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership, 24(2), 3-16. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555458920964851
Meese, J., & Hagedorn, J. (2019). Mundane content on social media: Creation, circulation, and the copyright problem. Social Media + Society, 5(2), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119839190
Thanks for your thoughts, Angela. I will read the Hickman article with interest tomorrow.
Jenny
A big but very important issue, Angela. I teach Year 10 HASS and it’s a daily reminder to ask them to reference. I tell them, when in doubt, reference! When I put together PowerPoints to use when teaching, it can be so easy to grab an image from here, and a quote from there and think “the students won’t know!” But we are modelling what we want and expect them to do – so I allow myself the extra time and make sure that nothing is copyrighted and everything is credited correctly. If it was my work, I would want it cited correctly 🙂
Hi Kendall, I teach MYP Individuals & Societies Year 10 currently. Yes, referencing is a daily issue. And we do use so many images/models too in our classes! However since we have been using NoodleTools, referencing has become easier and more manageable.