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I enjoy the exercise of working with the details of source and citation editing. Many thanks to The Editor for all of the hard work and generous advice given through this forum!
One of my latest endeavours has been to create source and citation data for digital images (photographs) downloaded from Facebook. I would like to offer my attempts below for scruitiny and improvement. I used EE 3.37 (concluding that 3.20 was less applicable since Facebook pages and photographs are not "archived") and 2.33 as primary guides. Since the SUBJECT of the photograph is more important to my research than the creator (photographer), I will cite by the name of the subject.
The difficulty, of course, is that Facebook (and other social media like Instagram, Tumblr, etc.) and the "world wide web" itself is a moving target. Facebook pages are "empemeral" (as the Editor described them in another discussion thread). Having said that, there are valuable resources available through these transient sites -- including photographs. I am passionate about embedding metadata into my digital photograph files, and like to do so in ways that are consistent with my other source and citation documentation rules.
So here are my attempts at citations (source and full reference notes) for a fictitious photo from Facebook. The subject of the photo is Jonathan "John" Q. Public. The photo appears on the Facebook page of his brother, James Public. The original photograph is still in the possession of their mother, Alice (Smith) Public. James scanned the image and posted it to Facebook. Please offer your suggestions.
SOURCE LIST:
Public, Jonathan "John" Q. Photograph. ca. 1970. Digital Image. Facebook page of James Public. 22 August 2012. Facebook. www.facebook.com/james.public11820/ : 2013.
FULL REFERENCE NOTE:
Jonathan "John" Q. Public photograph, ca. 1970; digital image, Facebook page of James Public, 22 August 2012, Facebook (www.facebook.com/james.public11820/ : accessed 11 November 2013). Color photograph of John in the back yard of his grandmother, Mary Jane (Smith) Jones, at 1234 Main Street, Springfield, Missouri. Original photograph is in scrapbook of John's childhood compiled by his mother, Alice (Jones) Public ca. 2010. James Public scanned the photograph in 2012 and posted the digital image to his Facebook page on 22 August 2012. John downloaded the digital image on 11 November 2013.
Hello, docjavadude,
Hello, docjavadude,
Obviously, you've read the earlier, longer, thread on Facebook citations <https://www.evidenceexplained.com/content/facebook-pages>. Thank you. Social media is definitely ephemeral--though mostly in its array of quirks. It has been reassuring to see, in the 8 years since we did the first Evidence-based QuickSheet for online citations, that the basic pattern still holds.
You've done a good job, again, of thinking through the issues—but let me raise one other. Why, in citing a published item, are you starting with the smallest item and working up to the largest, a pattern typically used for unpublished materials held in archives or private possession? You reference EE 3.37, which treats a photo privately held. Then you use the general rules for citing an online source, EE 2.33, to create the part of the citation that covers web sites and web pages. May I ask: why would you prefer that order instead of the basic pattern for publications that's used in the other Facebook thread and used for online images throughout EE?
There you go, asking those
There you go, asking those pesky "focussing" questions! (grin)
My thinking is that information from a personal profile (birthdate, anniversary, location, etc.) would fall in the broader category of published material and would justify use of the more general rules for citing online sources. A photograph on a Facebook page seems different to me. The Facebook page is functioning as a photo album or scrapbook (photographs on Facebook are even arranged in "Albums"). Since a physical artifact (photographic print) would be treated with the rules of EE 3.37, it seemed prudent to me to maintain that same sense "object" rather than information. Further, and perhaps more importantly, EE 3.37 deals with "privately held" artifacts. Many/most photographs on Facebook pages are not open for public viewing (based, of course, on an individual's privacy settings). Since the individual's Facebook "photo albums" can be limited in their viewing by the privacy settings (whether such settings are selected or not), I think they should be treated as privately held albums. Hence, I used EE 3.37 as the "starting place" for the citation. However, each digital file I download from an individual's Facebook page (and therefore from Facebook itself) is, in fact, from an online source. So I "interpolated" EE 3.37 with EE 2.33 in an attempt to capture this elusive quandry. Perhaps there should be an attempt to capture the "title" of the "photo album" on the Facebook user's page and identify that in the source citation.
Am I offbase in my thinking, or does this make sense?
Docjavadude,
Docjavadude,
You nailed it. Our purpose is to help inquirers "focus" on what's important. {smile}
With regard to whether a photograph found on Facebook should be cited as a published item or an original in someone's private posession, let's go back to the most fundamental premise of source citation: we cite what we use.
If we use an image that is published online, we are not using the original image that is in someone's private possession. We are using an image that is published online. It may or may not be an exact representation of the original that some particular person privately holds. The image published online could have all sorts of alterations. As a point of fact, many of them do.
Ergo, when we cite a image we find on Facebook, we cite it as a published source and we add whatever provenance information the online publisher gives for it—information that also may or may not be correct. Not unless we actually visited the person who held the original and made our own copy of what we eyeballed, or unless we personally received a copy from the owner, which the owner attested to be a true copy, would we cite the owner's private possession as the place to consult what we have used.
The last part of the last sentence above is also important. The distinctions in formats between citing an unpublished source in private possession vis à vis a published source hinges upon accessibility: where does someone have to go (or where do I go at a later date) to find the exact thing that I have just used?
"Unpublished Source" vs
"Unpublished Source" vs "Published Source" is going to become more and more difficult to discern, I think, as digital media becomes more prolific in our research. Take a digital photograph, for example. Is the "original" photograph the one contained on the memory chip of the camera, or can a copy that has been downloaded to the photographer's computer be counted as "original?" In a literal sense, the source has been changed -- what is downloaded from the camera has slight variations from the "original" file on the memory card. Many photographers use what comes out of the camera as a starting place, choosing to digitally manipulate/enhance the image. While darkroom techniques have always allowed for image manipulation, the possibilities for alteration are much greater in the digital realm. Add to this the reality that each time a jpg image (for example) is copied, there is "loss" and change to the image. Open the can of worms further, of course, to the ways that digital images and other media can be shared literally around the world in milliseconds.
While embedding metadata is one important element in documenting at least some of the history and provenance of the digital file, even those digital bits can be altered. "A photo doesn't lie" is simply not the truth, particularly in the world of digital photographs!
I think we will be asking a whole different set of questions in the years to come as we use more and more digital sources in our work. Your work, dear Editor, is extraordinarily helpful in setting some helpful groundwork as our research evolves.
docjavadude,
docjavadude,
You've addressed significant issues that all researchers should consider. While EE would likely tag this as a record analysis issue (original vs. derivative) rather than a basic citation issue (published vs. unpublished), evaluating the reliability of our materials amid modern technology definitely requires us to consider "a whole different set of questions" than we did just a few years ago.
I also start with the
I also start with the particular (e.g. the subject of the photograph) rather than the general (e.g. James Public's Facebook page) since the person in the photograph is the focus of my research. For that reason I would want to cite by the name of the subject rather than by the creator (photographer) or "publication" (James Public's Facebook page in this example). I am drawing this liberty from the description in EE 3.20 (which seems to apply even though the photograph(s) in question are not archived), "Whether you choose one option or the other [citing by the name of the creator or the name of the subject] will likely depend upon which person is more important to your research."
Again, I hope these "interpolations" are consistent with both purpose and logic.
Thank you SO MUCH for the
Thank you SO MUCH for the thoughtful and insightful response, dear Editor! I completely agree with your assessment that what we have in Facebook and other web "sources," and that our evidentiary discernment has to be particularly sharp with social media sites for the very reasons you note. Yet the sources are certainly part of our worlds of research now, so we must work to use these sources in the best possible ways.
I have been working more in the past few days with citation issues regarding social media as it relates to our work in historical documentation. For the purpose of this discussion thread I want to keep the focus on how to cite a photograph from a Facebook page. As The Editor insists in the book as well as many discussions here, this discipline of citation is often more art than science. That truth is compounded when working with constantly-changing social media like Facebook and Twitter. Further, there has yet to be “official” guidance from the Chicago Manual of Style or MLA. The APA has created a “standard,” but the APA style does not work for me as it would be inconsistent with my other citations (based mostly on the Humanities version of the Chicago Style).
Let me offer an updated attempt at citing a photograph from a Facebook page. I want to expand my original example to now include two different photographs in order to demonstrate implementation of my thinking. The first photograph will be the one described in the original post (a photo of John “Johnny” Q. Public from ca. 1970 posted on the Facebook page of his brother, James Public. The second imaginary photograph is one that John has taken and posted on his own Facebook page on 25 December 2011 in an album titled “Christmas 2011.” I offer a suggested format for Source Listing, but remain a bit stuck on how to cite a PHOTOGRAPH on the Facebook page, so have two alternatives for the Full Reference Note. I’m looking for guidance/suggestions/critique. Here we go:
SOURCE LISTING (i.e. Bibliography)
Public, James. “James Public,” Facebook. www.facebook.com/james.public11820 : 11 November 2013.
Public, Jonathan Q. “Johnny Public,” Facebook. www.facebook.com/john.q.public : 20 March 2012.
FULL REFERENCE NOTE (i.e. Footnote)
Focus on Facebook Page as Source (as in EE 2.33ff):
1. James Public, Facebook (www.facebook.com/james.public : accessed 11 November 2013), photo album; photograph of Jonathan “Johnny” Q. Public, ca. 1970, posted 22 August 2012. [continue with any descriptive information germane to the citation of the image.]
2. Jonathan Q. Public, Facebook (www.facebook.com/john.q.public : accessed 20 March 2012), “Christmas 2011” photo album; photograph of Jonathan “Johnny” Q. Public, 25 December 2011. [continue with any descriptive information germane to the citation of the image.]
OR Focus on Subject of Photograph (as in EE 3.37):
1a. Jonathan “Johnny" Q. Public, photograph, ca. 1970, digital image, Facebook photo album of James Public, 22 August 2012, Facebook (www.facebook.com/james.public11820 : accessed 11 November 2013). [continue with any descriptive information germane to the citation of the image.]
2a. Jonathan “Johnny" Q. Public, photograph, 2011, digital image, Facebook photo album of Johnny Public, “Christmas 2011," 25 December 2011, Facebook (www.facebook.com/john.q.public : accessed 20 March 2012). [continue with any descriptive information germane to the citation of the image.]
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Some rationale and thoughts:
1. Facebook pages can contain many different kind of information/media that we might want to access in historical research. Rather than creating a unique bibliographical entry (Source Listing) for each item or types I suggested in my original post, a single listing using the page owner/author’s name should ordinarily suffice.
2. Since social media sites like Facebook contain pages that are “authored” by particular users, the Source listing should be based on the author’s name and not the page title. Therefore, the full name of the author should be used when known as often the username and/or nickname used on the page might be different. This is a departure from the discussion on the Facebook citation thread. What do you think?
3. There are MANY considerations for how to treat a photograph retrieved from a Facebook page. Is it a digital copy of an artifact? Should it be treated as an artifact or as a published item (particularly when considering the ways that access to the image can be limited on Facebook to be, essentially, a private photo or photo album). Complicate the equation even further by the volume of images that might be downloaded from a single Facebook user’s page/album. How would a researcher uniquely identify each photographic image for citation? Chicago (and other Styles) seem wise in this matter to suggest that Source Listing is generally not necessary when citing photographs (suggesting Reference Note only).
Enough for now. I really am hoping for some feedback. I sincerely apologize for the length of this posting, but have come face to face (or Facebook to Facebook, as it were) with some of the challenges of using Social Media as a venue for research.