Conspiracy Theory Project - Verifying Information Using Databases (Global Patterns): Home

---------------------------------------------

How to cite Twitter (or other social media; Instagram and Tiktok would follow the same pattern)

"Begin with the user's Twitter handle in place of the author’s name. Next, place the tweet in its entirety in quotations, inserting a period after the tweet within the quotations. Include the date and time of posting, using the reader's time zone; separate the date and time with a comma and end with a period. Include the date accessed if you deem necessary."



The information above and both sample citations are direct quotes from Purdue OWL's website: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_works_cited_electronic_sources.html 

How to cite a government document*  (Note: the information below describes how to cite the PRINT version of a government document. If you found the document on the internet, either in a website or a database, after following the directions below, you then have to add in the website or database elements (title, publisher, publication date of website/database if given, URL (if required), date of access) after the print information .

"Cite the author of the publication if the author is identified. Otherwise, start with the name of the national government, followed by the agency (including any subdivisions or agencies) that serves as the organizational author. For congressional documents, be sure to include the number of the Congress and the session when the hearing was held or resolution passed as well as the report number. US government documents are typically published by the Government Printing Office."



The information above and both sample citations are direct quotes from Purdue OWL's website:
 https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_works_cited_page_books.html 

*Citing government documents can be especially tricky. If you have questions, please see a librarian.

Here are some page numbers in the MLA Guide that give samples citations for your sources:

Page 16: Multiple authors (three or more)

• The same rule applies for any source that has multiple authors. If you have a newspaper article with three authors, look at this book example on how to format three authors, then continue with the information you need for citing an article from a newspaper. 

Page 24: Citing an ebook in a database
Nonfiction Anthology from a Database (an ebook that has chapters)

• The samples on this page show other elements a book may have (editions, etc.).
• If your book doesn't have all that information as in the sample (no article title, book editor, translator, or edition), leave that out.   

Page 25: Citing an encyclopedia article originally in print, now in a database

Page 26: Citing an encyclopedia article, born digital (only found in a database). 

Page 29:
Citing an article from a print newspaper that was found on a website
Citing an article from a newspaper that was never in print, and only found on a website.

• If you find an article from a newspaper in a database, put the database information in the same location as you would the website information (so replace the website info with the database info)

Page 30: Citing an article from a scholarly journal from a database

Page 34: Citing a YouTube video

Citing a Website
Use the exact same format as is found on Page 29 for an article from a newspaper that was never in print, but found on a website, with one minor change.  If the website has a publisher and the publisher is different from the name of the website you would include the name of the publisher immediately after the title of the website.  In the two examples on Page 29, the publisher of the website (New York Times and CNN) are the same as the titles of the websites, so that's why the publisher isn't listed, but websites usually do include publisher names.