Social media participation policy

Terms of use

Victoria Legal Aid provides social media channels for external stakeholders to engage with us.

To ensure a safe and supportive environment for our clients, staff and all participants in our social media channels, we expect participants to behave appropriately and in accordance with our values.

This policy aims to encourage a culture of:

• open exchange of information, knowledge and views
• collaboration to overcome challenges and issues
• respectful, honest and constructive debate.

We will not accept rude or disrespectful behaviour, personal attacks, bullying, harassment or offensive behaviour.

Content posted to Victoria Legal Aid’s social media channels should be:

• respectful
• concise
• appropriate
• free from objectionable language.

Transparent disclosure of business relationships

Participants should declare any potential, perceived or actual conflict of interest in relation to financial interest or business relationships and their social media activity.

Defamation, copyrig​ht and ownership of social media content

Participants should:

• ensure that content they contribute does not risk causing injury to another person’s reputation
• respect copyright laws and attribute any content they reproduce to appropriate sources.

Unless otherwise stated, copyright of materials presented on the Victoria Legal Aid internal and external social media accounts and platforms resides with Victoria Legal Aid.

Apart from fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under copyright legislation, no part may be reproduced or reused for any commercial purposes whatsoever.

Contempt of court

General content about current court proceedings may be posted, but participants must not post content about current court proceedings if it risks prejudicing those proceedings, for example by discussing the judge’s potential decision or material that will not be part of the evidence in those proceedings.

Participants must comply with any court suppression orders.

Procedures in the event of breaches of this policy

Victoria Legal Aid will remove material that is identified as inappropriate.

If there is a serious breach of this policy, such as in the case of bullying, sexual harassment or offensive behaviour, further action will be taken.

If you are concerned that content posted on a Victoria Legal Aid social media platform is inappropriate, you should contact us through the Feedback form on our website.