Hi Laurel,

The APA 7 manual doesn’t specifically show an example of citing a YouTube comment, but it’s safe to assume you can adapt the format for citing comments on articles and other types of post. This would be as follows:

Username. (Year, Month Day). The text of the comment, the first 20 words [Comment on the video Name of video]. YouTube. URL

For a quote from an Instagram post, just cite it using the author’s name and the year, e.g. (Smith, 2020).

I’m having a hard time finding out how to cite (both in-text and reference) a YouTube comment in APA 7th ed. The main APA website only has information on the 6th ed. Does this mean it hasn’t changed?

I also don’t know how to in-text cite a quote from an Instagram post (not the commenter but the poster’s caption).

Thank you!

Hi Effie,

APA suggests dealing with sources like that differently depending on whether your audience will have access to them. Most likely, you’re writing a paper for a university course, so the reader will have access to the unlisted video; therefore, you can cite it like a normal YouTube video, including the URL and all other available information. If you were writing an article for publication in a journal, though, you would have to cite it as a personal communication instead, since the reader would not have access to the video.

I was wondering if you know the APA 7 section that refers to how do we deal with unlisted YouTube videos, lectures for example- that are part of a University course material but not open to the general public?

Hi Megan,

See the information here on avoiding ambiguity in in-text citations. When referring to the same author, different citations may be distinguished by year (if the videos are from different years). When they’re from the same year, add letters to distinguish them, e.g. (Scribbr, 2020a) … (Scribbr, 2020b). These letters should also be added in the corresponding reference entries.

Hi Celina,

See our guide to citing websites in APA for info on how to cite a blog in the 7th edition :) Hope that helps!