Social media post

You may need to consult more than one section of Re:cite to accurately represent the source used. Your citation may look different depending on the number of authors it has. Check the About Chicago B page for further advice.

In-text citation example

The University Library noted that  ... (Unimelb Library, Twitter post, October 23, 2018, [3:48 p.m.]).

Michael Truth agreed (November 17, 2018, comment on Unimelb Library, Twitter post, October 23, 2018, [3:48 p.m.]) saying that "...

OR

In a message posted to Twitter on November 4, 2016 (at 3:48 p.m.), the University of Melbourne Library (@unilibrary) noted that ... 

(April 17, 2017, comment on Chicago Manual of Style 2015).

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Reference list

Reference list template

References to social media posts are generally only included in the text. No reference list entry is required unless they form a critical part of your research or are frequently cited. Check with your lecturer if you are unsure.

Author of post (handle where available). Year. “Text of Post.” Location/description of post, date of post. URL.

Reference list example

University of Melbourne Library (@unilibrary). 2018. “Onthisday in 1975 90% of Icelandic women went on strike, refusing to work in protest of gender inequality. This became known as 'Women's Day Off'.” Twitter, October 23. https://twitter.com/unilibrary/status/1054855102111064065.

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Tips for this reference type

• See Manual 14.106 and Turabian 19.5.3.
• These examples are for publicly available content. Private and direct messages should be treated as a form of personal communication (see Manual 14.111 ).
• The text of the post should include up to 160 characters, including spaces.
• The location or description of the post could include the social media service and a description if relevant (i.e. Instagram photo).
• If a website refers to themselves by their domain name (which is case sensitive), shorten and capitalise it in a logical way (e.g., www.google.com becomes Google).
• A URL for a specific item can often be found via the date stamp. Where a specific URL is not available, include a link to the whole profile or account (eg. http://www.facebook.com/unilibrary).
• Comments on posts should be cited in relation to the respective post (see examples at Manual 14.209).
• Because social media content is subject to editing and deletion, authors are advised to retain a copy of anything they cite (see 13.17). If a deleted post must be cited, that fact should be added in parentheses at the end of the citation. (See 14.104).

• Author-date reference list entries that include a month and day (as for a newspaper article) do not need to repeat the year with the month and day. The year of publication follows the author’s name; the month and day are placed as normal (14.89).
  If no such date can be found, include an access date. Precede the access date with 'accessed' (see 13.15 ). Use n.d. in place of a year of publication in both in-text citations and the reference list (see Manual 14.44 for examples).
  Use appropriate capitalization where needed
• To avoid conflation with the name of the author, n.d. is always lowercase, and it is preceded by a comma in text citations.
• Timestamps are not necessary but can be included to differentiate posts from the same day.