Frequently Asked Questions about Citing Sources in Chicago Format

In Chicago style, it is acceptable to limit citations of social media posts to the text itself.

Here’s an example:

Max Larkin tweeted that he had seen “more than a few families give up on their buses after 15- to 20-minute waits” (@jmlarkin, September 8, 2022).

If you want to include a link to the post, you should include a note containing the following elements:

• Author of post
• Up to 160 characters of text of the post in place of a title.
• Type of post (X, Instagram, Facebook, etc.)
• Description of post if relevant (video, image, etc.)
• Date of post
• URL

Example

          1. Max Larkin, (@jmlarkin), “It’s the first day of school in Boston,”, Twitter, September 8, 2022, https://twitter.com/jmlarkin/status/1567852415931523074.

Chicago suggests that you only include social media posts in your bibliography if you quote from them extensively or if you are citing a long X (formerly Twitter) thread.

The format for the bibliography is similar to the note but inverts the author’s name and replaces commas between elements with periods.

Larkin, Max. “It’s the first day of school in Boston.” Twitter, September 8, 2022. https://twitter.com/jmlarkin/status/1567852415931523074.

Chicago suggests one format for multimedia notes that includes the following elements:

• Creator
• Title
• Date of episode
• Additional contributors
• Publishing organization
• Medium
• Length
• URL

For the note, the date should appear right after the title of the episode. For the bibliography, the date should appear after the series or show name.

Note:

          1. Nancy Updike, “Black Box,” October 13, 2022, in Serial’s We Were Three, produced by Sarah Koenig, podcast, 00:43, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-were-three/id1648534112.

Bibliography:

Updike, Nancy. “Black Box.” Produced by Sarah Koenig. Serial, We Were Three. October 13, 2022. Podcast, 00:43. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-were-three/id1648534112.