Citing Twitter, Twittering Citations
Cat in the Stack
(Thanks to Flickr photographer Thomas Hawk for this incredible Twitter image.)
Does anyone know what is the proper way to cite a Twitter reference? Or should we be asking how do you catch a moonbeam in your hand? (I think that is a Rogers and Hammerstein reference, a rather schmatzy rendition of phaeochromocytoma). HASTAC pal Steve Burnett (thereminist extraordinaire) poses this question and it makes me wonder if anyone out there has an answer but also wonder (a la "Maria") if there is a need to have a citation style for texts that well may evaporate? I am writing an article on humanistic aspects of technology for a handbook published by Oxford University Press---and they won't even let us use url's as citations since, they argue, their books will be around lots longer than one can predict that websites will persist. Or maybe we should start rethinking citation practices as ARCHIVAL practices: that is, the url's may eventually lead us to internet dead ends, but they show the tracks that once were in the water (or what was once the water). Thus: the moonbeam in the hand. Maybe you can't catch 'em, but you can document where they once were and what they looked like when they used to reside there.
Any one else have any thoughts to share on this ephemeral topic?
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Thanks to your moonbeam lyrics reference I now have "Swinging on a Star" stuck in my head. Luckily I like the song.
Funny you should mention ephemeral - I'm currently reading Matthew G. Kirschenbaum's Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination as background research for an audio piece I'm developing for a gallery later this year, and I found this striking in relation to the publisher's guideline you describe: [This book] seeks to provide a corrective to certain commonplace notions of new media writing - that electronic texts are ephemeral....
Wouldn't it just make sense to follow accepted conventions by referencing author, a few words beginning the tweet, the date, and the specific URL and date of access? For author name, I would suggest using the Twitter account name and the author's "real" name in square brackets, if known.
As such, Matt Kirschenbaum's tweet that got me to this blog post would be cited such:
mkirschenbaum [Matthew G. Kirschenbaum]. "cathy davidson want..." 20 Mar. 2008. Twitter. 20 Mar. 2008. <http://twitter.com/mkirschenbaum/statuses/774210945>.