Memes And Copyright: Fair Use Or Infringement?

In the year 1976, Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist devised, the term 'meme' in his book "The Selfish Gene". In this book, Dawkins defines the meme as a unit of cultural meaning, such as a value or an idea, which is passed from one generation to another. Dawkins further illustrated that the meme is the cultural counterpart to the unit of physical heredity.

In recent times, the most popular understanding of memes would be illustrations, photos or movie excerpts which are superimposed with text with a humorous undertone, hence placed in a completely new funny context. These internet jokes (memes) spread like wildfire in the internet community, hence making the memes viral. The main issue here is whether these light-hearted memes which are mostly ironic and critical; functioning as a parody for the main content is infringing copyrights of the original artist?