Let me preface this by saying, I understand. In a modern society, sites like twitter and blogger have a significant impact on our ability to report profound events and provide coverage of injustices, political debates, etc, that may otherwise not be possible given previous limitations. None the less, I find that there is something perhaps unprofessional and even almost dirty about integrating Twitter and other social networking sites in to the high-profile club of the Standard MLA Format.
Social networking, separate from the old online office meeting tools, began as and is still often considered a gathering place for informal communication amongst peers and/or friends. The general demographic for these sites was hipsters and soon local small town businesses owned by said hipsters. When I say hipsters, I do not mean it in today's nearly derogatory sense but in a way of saying that these were mostly relatively young individuals who despite having grown up in the ideal "old fashioned" environments of their caretakers, had chosen to embrace the more mechanized and romanticized aspects of living: computers, the world wide web, the further indulgence of freeware which would take them far beyond just romanticizing, online social media, and so on. Note names like Josh Harris, Steve Jobs, and Linus Torvalds. Further down the road, as was to be expected, larger businesses and corporations would see in this a great marketing opportunity.
Let us skip ahead two decades. placed in an office building. Two men, each in different cubicles, are conversing with each other via Facebook, causally throwing ideas back and forth. Bare in mind, here is where my opinion on the subject really comes in, potentially blending any knowledge and ignorance I may have on the issue.
The two men decide to officially share this idea with the outside world. To then take the agreed upon idea and place in the same area as one might say, "John Doe likes GoatsplosionWorldTour2012. 5 others like this," seems to me highly inappropriate. It is unprofessional to place it on the same table. This would be much like instead of publishing a remarkable piece on the overpopulation of jellyfish in a respected journal, slipping it in to a pulp magazine between a reprinted short story by Clark Ashton Smith and a film review written in the style of H.P. Lovecraft because, "...well, these kids, you know? I figure it's the right demographic. I mean, Cthulhu has tentacles, jellyfish have tentacle, it's great exposure," and to then further encourage this by integrating the citation of such source(s) in to the standard MLA format. It seems a bit improper to cite something your read on twitter, a pulp magazine, or any otherwise aberrant or eccentric source.
Absolutely any and all opinions are welcome on the subject.
Here is the link in pertaining to Tweets in MLA: http://ht.ly/9qhqK
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