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Since a Twitter conference keynote will likely span several tweets, cite it the way you would cite a Twitter thread. Follow the MLA format template. List the author of the keynote, the text of the first tweet in the thread (shortened if necessary), Twitter as the title of the container, the date, and the URL:
@roopikarisam (Roopika Risam). “Thank you, @annetiquate & @caitduffy49 for the opportunity to speak today and to all of you who are participating. . . .” Twitter, 18 July 2019, twitter.com/roopikarisam/status/1151919685149036545.
You could also use a description in place of the tweet text:
@roopikarisam (Roopika Risam).
A thread is a series of separately written but related tweets that are given a single URL. If you’re discussing the thread as a whole (rather than simply quoting an individual tweet in the thread), treat the thread as a collaborative work. As always, follow the MLA format template.
Author
Follow the guidelines in the MLA Handbook: list the Twitter handles of the original tweet’s author and of any participants in the thread. Include real names, if known, in parentheses. If more than two people are involved, use “et al.”
@poniewozik (James Poniewozik) et al. “I’ve joked that ‘TV critic’ . . .
Here we refer to meme in its sense as “an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media” (“Meme”).
Citing Particular Examples of Memes
You would cite a meme in MLA style just as you would any other work: follow the MLA format template. When citing a meme, you should cite the particular instance or instances of the meme you consult—not the entire genre, the examples of which are usually created by many different hands and published in various places and at various times.
Published 13 December 2017
Ignore symbols when alphabetizing. Thus, to alphabetize tweets in a works-cited list, ignore the @ and start with the first letter of the username:
Works Cited
@humcommons. “Did you know you can now upload your CV to your Humanities Commons profile? Well, now you know. https://hcommons.org.” Twitter, 16 Oct. 2017, twitter.com/humcommons/status/920032411357974529.
@mlastyle. “Ode to Times New Roman; or, the MLA’s paper-formatting guidelines–now online for free: https://style.mla.org/formatting-papers/.” Twitter, 16 Aug. 2017, twitter.com/mlastyle/status/897851738757226496.
Read our earlier post to learn how to alphabetize entries that begin with a numeral.
Published 26 January 2018