Citing Social Media with Chicago Author–Date Referencing

Previously, we’ve looked at how to cite social media using Chicago footnote referencing. But if you’re using the author–date version of Chicago referencing, you will need a slightly different format when citing social media posts. Check out our guide below to find out how this works.

In-Text Citations of Social Media in Chicago Referencing

First of all, with social media, you may not have to ‘cite’ it in the traditional sense at all. This is because the Chicago Manual of Style suggests limiting mention of the post to the main text. For instance:

The singer reported being ‘humbled and excited as all hell’ to be playing the Coachella Festival (@ArianaGrande, 3 January 2018).

Here, we’ve included the account name and date alongside a quote from a tweet. And as long as this is enough for the reader to find the tweet in question, we do not need to give a formal citation or list the social media post in the reference list at the end of the document.

However, you should check with your tutor or lecturer before doing this in an essay, as many universities require you to cite all sources in full. And to do this in Chicago author–date referencing, we would need to cite the author’s surname and a year of publication in brackets:

The singer reported being ‘humbled and excited as all hell’ to be playing the Coachella Festival (Grande 2018).

We would then give additional publication information in the reference list.

Reference List

As described above, you only need to list social media posts in your reference list if you have cited them formally in the main text (not if you simply mention them in passing). If you have cited a social media post, however, the reference list format in Chicago author–date referencing is:

Surname, First Name (Account Name). Year of Publication. ‘Excerpt from post text (up to 160 characters)’. Platform, Full Date of Publication. URL.

For instance, the Ariana Grande tweet above would be listed like this:

Grande, Ariana (@ArianaGrande). 2018. ‘humbled and excited as all hell @coachella thank u’. Twitter, 3 January 2018. https://twitter.com/ArianaGrande/status/1080686324003278848.

And if you’d like help checking the referencing in your work, let us know.