APA Style Citations

Social media

APA 7th Edition includes specific guidance on how to cite social media posts, comments, and other types of modern media.  

 

Titles

For Facebook posts, Instagram posts, TikToks, and tweets, include the first 20 words of the post for the title. URLs, emojis, and hashtags are included as one word.

These titles should be italicized, with the exception of emojis.

Obtaining original content through social media

If social media was used to link to original content (News articles, blogposts, etc) cite the original source rather than the social media sites. For example, If you came across a news article that was attached to a tweet you would focus on citing the news article itself.

Missing items

At times you may encounter information that is missing or unknown when creating a citation. Below are some instructions on how to handle them accordingly. 

 

For a work with no date, use the term “n.d.” for both the reference list and the in-text citation:

(Author, n.d.)

 

For a work with no author, provide the title followed by the date and source. For the in-text citation, place the title followed by the year:

(Title, year).

 

For a work with no title, provide the author and date followed by a description of the work within square brackets as well as the source:  

Author. (Date). [Description of work]. Source.

 

For a detailed table with instructions on how to handle many types of missing information, see this page of the APA Style website.