The 19-year-old high school student accused of racism after posting a chimp meme on a Facebook group says he's been taken out of context, that he did not know the author he was referring to was Indigenous, and he's now receiving death threats.

HSC students were asked to analyse Indigenous poet Ellen van Neerven's poem 'Mango' in an English exam earlier this week. Many criticised and abused the author via social media afterwards.

One image, posted in the public HSC Discussion Group on Facebook, showed an image of a chimpanzee on a typewriter, with the caption, 'LEAKED IMAGE OF THE AUTHOR OF 'MANGO'.

The student who posted it - Josh Provost from Taree Christian College on the New South Wales mid-north coast - says his mobile number, home address, mum's mobile number and other information are now being circulated online. He's been 'doxxed'.

"I never meant any ill harm," he told Hack.

"It was just a playful l joke made in the moment of a stressful situation of the HSC.

"I do apologise if it was seen as heavily racist but I do believe it has been taken way out of proportion, [van Neerven] would understand the value of context."

How did this happen?

It all started on Monday, with the first compulsory HSC exam: English 1. Josh says 20 minutes after the exam finished at 12.30 he "fired up the old meme machine".

Here's the meme:

Skip Twitter Tweet FireFox NVDA users - To access the following content, press 'M' to enter the iFrame. Year 12 students are posting racist memes about Indigenous poet Ellen Van Neerven on FB after her poem was in this year's English exam. pic.twitter.com/X8np1GBIVc — Osman Faruqi (@oz_f) October 16, 2017

In the hours after the exam, dozens of students posted memes on the page about 'Mango'. The exam had asked students "how the poet conveys the delight of discovery".

Apart from posting memes in the closed group, some students also began messaging 26-year-old van Neerven directly on Facebook and Twitter:

"We were asked to analyse your mango f****d poem - and I'm asking what the f***k was the point of your mango bullshit?" one student wrote to the poet.

Another said:

"In all honesty there wasn't much to analyse cos it reads like a 4-year-old wrote it. Thank you for leaving me eternally traumatised by mangoes."

'Meme was about infinite monkey theorem'

Articles about students abusing an Indigenous poet began appearing on Tuesday morning.

Evelyn Araluen, a poet and PhD candidate at the University of Sydney, tweeted that students had invaded Ms van Neerven's privacy and sent abusive messages:

"This isn't about your meme, it's about when children feel licence to drag authors into their exam angst. It's not cute, it's harassment," she wrote.

Many of the articles said that HSC students had racially abused the poet.

Students on the Facebook group believe they have been wilfully misrepresented by the media in order to fit a convenient narrative of racist high school students gone wild.

Josh says he had no idea van Neerven was Indigenous, he had not heard of her until the exam, and he took the chimp image from the Wikipedia page on the infinite monkey theorem - the concept that enough monkeys smashing keys on enough typewriters will eventually randomly produce a specific text, like the complete works of Shakespeare.

Ellen van Neerven is a widely published author and the recipient of the NSW Premier's Literary Awards Indigenous Writers Prize, and other awards. She was named the Sydney Morning Herald's best Young Australian Novelist in 2015.

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"After the exam I said to the boys and the girls in the common room, that was a pretty bad poem," Josh said.

"It was like someone has thrown a typewriter over the fence at Taronga Zoo and they've just pumped out a poem for us."

"I went home, typed in 'infinite monkey theorem', grabbed the first photo, put it up and said, LEAKED IMAGE OF THE AUTHOR OF 'MANGO'.

"I had no clue she was Indigenous and if I did I understand the connotations of monkeys and people of colour - given that knowledge I wouldn't have posted.

"Her name has no indication and the poem itself has no intrinsic things that would lead to it."

"The way the media is these days, [stories about the meme] got copy-and-pasted with no background information.

"The main point of the articles was that [chimp meme] picture.

"It all got drawn back to me."

He said he has received death threats from a caller who has changed their voice as well as Facebook messages calling him a "racist pig" that should die.

"Mum even got a message - I told her to turn off her phone," he said.

"She knew full well I'm not racist, she was just bewildered how someone could get her phone number."

Josh said when he realised the potentially racist connotations of his meme, he messaged van Neerven to apologise. He says she didn't reply.

Hack also contacted van Neerven for comment.

Inside the HSC Facebook page

The Facebook page of 70,000 HSC students is a place where students share notes, discuss homework, and relate with others going through the HSC.

"Obviously, memes are a pretty big spectacle these days," Josh said.

Here's some of the memes that were being posted about the poem 'Mango' around the time Josh Provost posted his monkey meme.

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There are dozens more like this - all about mangoes, and none referring to the author.

A popular post by a student in the discussion group reads: "We are not racist. In fact, we didn't even know her Aboriginal heritage until after you started labelling us as racist. It was not our intention to offend her heritage or make fun of her due to her race and culture.

"The monkey on the typewriter was taken way out of context.

"Stop posting about us and our page everywhere as we didn't intend to offend Ellen. We just like our memes and banter."