[Air-L] Air-L Digest, Vol 97, Issue 27

[Patti Jeter]

On 8/27/2012 6:01 PM, air-l-request at listserv.aoir.org wrote:
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2012 18:18:10 -0400
> From: Nikki Usher<nusher at usc.edu>
> To:air-l at listserv.aoir.org
> Subject: [Air-L] citing a tweet - blind review issues?
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAJFca342YzgK_pKa1ykVqpPuLfQuE6Q4Qpcth=KJwiC_qxN_pA at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Hi all:
>
> I find myself citing tweets more and more often: for instance, I had  a
> question about an article I was working on and went to twitter, where the
> head of the web analytics company I had a question about wrote back to me
> directly, for instance, and the company provided me with a useful
> infographic and quote to illustrate their point.
>
> I want to cite the Tweet, and will, but for anyone super curious, the Tweet
> and link are obvs. public and anyone can figure out it's me.
>
> Do I care? What should we do? Is there an easy answer to this?
>
> -- Nikki Usher, PhD Assistant Professor George Washington University 
> School of Media and Public Affairs (o) 202-994-3841 (m) 213-220-7824 
> www.nikkiusher.com
Hi Nikki,

Assuming you are working in APA 6, If it's a personal tweet directly to 
me I would reference it like any other type of personal correspondence 
(such as a letter).

According to the manual it would only appear as an in text citation, not 
in the references. It says you would show the first two initials of the 
correspondent, the words "personal communication" and as exact a date as 
possible. The example they give looks something like this: (T.K. Lutes 
personal communication, August 28, 2012) . If you reference the name in 
the author in the text, you can just parenthetically cite that it's 
personal correspondence and give the date.

If it's a public tweet, I would just cite it like any other blog post.

I hope this is helpful for you.

Patricia Moore-Jeter
Rutgers University School of Communication and Information
  http://virtuallifeconcreteworld.wordpress.com/