Netiquette for acknowledging email and social media authorship

One of the major items which are not well defined for Netiquette is ownership of posting or plagiarism. Below is a great article which clarifies this issue both for email and other social media communications. Remember, do not take the open forum of the Internet to assume all information is free and able to be posted at will. This issue is extensively discussed in my book, mentioned at the end of this post.

How to Cite Social Media in Scholarly Writing

Posted on September 17, 2013

By, Camille Gamboa, PR, SAGE US

While it may have taken some time for many in academe to take seriously the informal, unpredictable, and undiscriminating world of social media, sites like Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, Tumblr, YouTube, Instagram, and Vine play both a communicative and a constructive role in important societal matters. For example, it would be difficult to deny the impact that news sent out in 140 characters has had on business, political elections, and even medicine and armed conflict. In fact, the U.S. Library of Congress is taking social media seriously enough to become the permanent archive of Twitter.

As it seems that social media will only play a bigger role in future research of all disciplines, I took to doing my own research on how Facebook posts, tweets, YouTube videos, etc. should be cited in academic publications. I came across the following table from TeachBytes that I thought would be helpful to share with our SAGE Connection readers as well (thank you, Aditi!):

The Chicago Manual of Style

As it is not included here in this chart, I did some research to try to find out how to cite social media outlets following the Chicago Manual of Style. I was unable to find official guides for Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, but here is a list of what I did find below:

Blog Posts:

Firstname Lastname, “Title of the Blog Post Entry,” title or description of the blog with (blog), Date posted, url.

* Note – “(blog)” does not need to be included if the word “blog” is part of the name of the blog already.

Citations of blog posts are part of the notes and not included in the bibliography unless they are frequently cited in one paper.

Emails:

Firstname Lastname, email message to XX, Date.

Citations of emails are usually provided in a note and are rarely listed in a bibliography. Email addresses should not be included.
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My book is now atop the Amazon Netiquette list. Please go to Amazon and search for "netiquette" . There is a wonderful review from Kirkus as well.

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