FYS 120: Social Media and Democracy

While you may already have experience citing books and articles, citing social media posts is a little different. Since social media posts rarely titles, you may have to tweak the "title" area of the citation. For example, social media titles often don't use quotation marks or italics, if the title is more of a description than an proper title. 

The basic format is shown below, but you will probably need to adapt it for your own source:

Poster's Name [@Handle]. "Title." Platform, day month year of post, URL.

Here are some good places to see examples of social media citations using MLA style. Both of these sources have excellent explanations of how to cite all kinds of resources, not just social media posts!

• MLA Handbook Plus Online -- check out the section called Citation Examples (Appendix 2)
• Purdue OWL's MLA Formatting and Style Guide -- see the section on Electronic Sources

For more citation questions and answers, check out our Citation Guide.