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LSBU Harvard Referencing: Social media

Referencing social mediia

Use the guidelines and format on this page to reference posts you want to include in your assignmenst that you find on social media platforms.

There are separate pages for the most popular platforms:

   Facebook

   Instagram

   Twitter

Best Practice tips

Authors/Creators

Creators of social media posts often use their first names, pseudonyms or handles.  If no named author is available use one of these instead.

Title

Social media titles or posts can often be too long to include in a reference.  Write the first few words or sentence and then add ... to indicate that you have omitted part of it.

For further guidance on referencing online sources, see General guidelines for referencing online resources

Format of the reference

You will need:

  • Name of the author(s) or name of the social media account
  • Year the post was published or updated
  • Title/content of the post
  • Social media platform
  • Day month
  • Web address
  • Date accessed

 

Format:

Author’s surname, Initials. or Name of the social media account (Year the post was published or updated) Title of post [Social media platform], Day month. Available from: www.webaddress.com [Accessed day month year].

Example:

Libraries Without Borders US (2021) In 2019, University researchers found that 96% of high school seniors had trouble telling which news sources were legitimate [Twitter], 25 January. Available from: https://twitter.com/LWB_USA/status/1353803220792070145 [Accessed 26 January 2021].

In-text citation: (Libraries Without Borders US, 2021)

Example reference

Video

LSBU Harvard Referencing Quick Guide