How to cite a social media post in APA 6
A post from Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon, or a similar network. Previous APA edition — still required by some journals and older style guides.
Quick answer
To cite a social media post in APA 6, include the author(s), year, title, and container or publisher details. A concrete example is below.
Example
Nosek, B. (2024, February 10). Today’s key finding on reproducibility. Twitter. https://twitter.com/BrianNosek/status/example
This example is rendered with the official CSL definition for APA 6. For the exact style required by your journal, paste your references into DEEPNOTIS and pick that style from the dropdown — the app covers 2,800+ variants.
What you need
For a social media post, APA 6 expects these fields at minimum:
- Author (handle or display name)
- Full date
- Text of the post or description
- Platform name
- URL
Common mistakes
- Using title case for article titles. APA uses sentence case for everything except the journal name.
- Spelling out author first names. APA 7 uses initials (e.g. 'Smith, J.'), not full given names.
- Forgetting the DOI. When a DOI exists, most styles now require it (usually as a full https://doi.org/… URL).
- Inconsistent capitalization. APA uses sentence case for titles; MLA and Chicago use title case. Mixing them is the single most common style error.
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Last updated: 5 May 2026