I was surprised to learn that citing a Tweet was acceptable or even possible. It would seem that the Modern Language Association has an approved method. Before we get to the method, let’s just take a minute to reflect on the idea of citing a Tweet. Social media has become such an enormous flow of information/garbage that you really have to question the validity of the information you are receiving. However, if you simply want to repeat something that someone has said, and the words were profound enough to entice you to do so, then you can cite those words. Here is the format that this acceptable by MLA standards:
Last Name, First Name (User Name).
“The tweet in its entirety.” Date, Time. Tweet.
If you are interested in the APA format, you can reference
the Mashable site I used: http://mashable.com/2013/09/27/tweet-citation-generator/
If you find yourself forgetting this format, then by all
means let me provide you with a handy tool to overcome that obstacle as
well. From that same article, there is a
web developer who wrote a program just for citing Tweets. Tweet2Cite.com is free and easy to use. It also will help with those “multiple-tweet-cites”. The site was created by a guy by the name of
Ben Hedlund. Ben created the site in
order to practice web development, he also felt that the site allowed for “freeing up time for actual journalism and
research." I would have to
agree. So many different sources could
take a very long time if you have to cite dozens of tweets.
So there you have
it, a cite generator for Tweets, and the approval of the MLA and APA
formats. I leave you with just one word
of caution, be careful what you used a reference material. Just because you can cite it, does not make
it “cite worthy”.
Great advice at the end of the post. Information abounds, unfortunately there is a lot of mistaken and false information published. When using a tweet to cite, insure that it is a reputable account holder and that they are who they claim to be. Twitter does offer verified accounts for those in the public eye.
ReplyDeleteThat is interesting that you can now cite a tweet, although I am not surprised cause I know eventually there is going to be a way to cite everything possible! What I find the most interesting about it is that with twitter you can simply "retweet" something that someone says so then you wouldn't even have to cite them! But it is useful if someone is using a tweet in a study or paper so they don't have to worry about plagiarism.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first saw this I was amazed that we were now able to cite a tweet, although I think that I would still be weary on doing that in a paper.
ReplyDelete