Social Media Citation Generator

How to Use the Social Media Citation Generator

1. 1. Open the post and copy its link. Use the post's own address, not the account's home page. Copy the date, and the text as it was written.
2. 2. Enter the author and the text. Put the person's real name in Author(s) if the account shows one, and an organization's name as it appears. Put the text of the post in Title. APA uses its first 20 words.
3. 3. Add the platform and the date. Type X, Instagram or Facebook in Publisher / Site, and the date as year-month-day.
4. 4. Choose the descriptor. Type Post in Format / medium for APA, or Photograph or Video for an image or clip. Leave it empty for MLA and Chicago.
5. 5. Pick a style and copy. Choose APA, MLA, Chicago or any of the 10,834 styles.

What the Styles Want From a Post

APA 7 (§10.15) gives the account holder's name, the username in square brackets, the date, the first 20 words of the post in italics, a bracketed description of anything attached, the platform and the link. MLA 9 uses the full text of the post as the title, in quotation marks, with the platform as the container. The MLA Style Center recommends naming the platform X for every post on it, old or new. Chicago 18 names the poster and the @handle, quotes the text, and ends with the platform, the date and the link. It usually cites social media in notes, with a bibliography entry only where the source matters to your argument.

Social Media Citation Examples

A post by Ezra Klein, the MLA Style Center's own example, written on April 22, 2022. The APA and Chicago lines apply their patterns to the same post.

What the Generator Gives You

With the Klein post entered and Post in the format box, the generator returns the APA reference without the username in brackets, because the form has no username field. Add [@ezraklein] after the initial by hand. In MLA and Chicago, leave the format box empty; otherwise the descriptor prints as a stray sentence. The Chicago bibliography line stays empty, in line with Chicago's habit of citing posts in notes. A multi-word account name such as NASA Webb Telescope may be read as a person and inverted, so check the author.

Which Tool Do You Need?

• A post on a social network — this page.
• A page on a website, including a news site — the Website Citation Generator.
• A blog post — the Blog Post Citation Generator.
• A video on YouTube — the YouTube Citation Generator.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I cite an X post in APA 7?

Give the poster's name, the @username in brackets, the date, the first 20 words in italics, [Post], the platform and the link: Klein, E. [@ezraklein]. (2022, April 22). My phone keeps autocorrecting “I” to “AI” which is a little on-the-nose [Post]. X. URL. In text: (Klein, 2022).

How do I cite a tweet in MLA 9?

Use the poster's name, then the post in quotation marks and X as the container, with the date and the link without https://: Klein, Ezra. “My phone keeps autocorrecting ‘I’ to ‘AI’ which is a little on-the-nose.” X, 22 Apr. 2022, twitter.com/ezraklein/status/1517591690101489665.

Do I use the person's real name or their username?

Use the real name when the account shows one, and give the username in square brackets in APA. MLA uses the @username as the author only when no real name is known. In Chicago, give both, with the username in parentheses.

Should I write Twitter or X?

Name the platform as it is called now. The MLA Style Center recommends X for any post on the platform, including those from before the name change; the address may still read twitter.com, and you should copy it exactly.

How do I cite an Instagram or Facebook post?

The same way: the poster, the caption or text, the date, the platform and the link. In APA, describe the image or video in brackets, such as [Photograph] or [Video], in place of [Post]. The poster of a Facebook page is the page's name.

How do I cite a post I can no longer open?

Cite it as you saw it and add a screenshot to an appendix if your instructor allows. MLA has guidance for deleted posts; give the poster, the text and the date, and say in your prose that the post was removed.

Which citation styles does the social media generator support?

All 10,834 styles in the library, including APA 7, MLA 9 and Chicago 18.