Referencing websites

I got a great question from a student asking how to compile APA website references. Now most references need four things: authors, a publication date, a title, and a source. My approach to website references is to seek these four. However, websites sometimes get tricky, because the author may not be listed, finding a date can sometimes be very difficult, and often the title is not that clear. So my suggestions are as follows to compile a reference:

• Author. See if we can find an author; and if not, use the corporate author name (e.g. if on the Radio New Zealand website, use Radio New Zealand as the author, if there is no clear individual author)
• Date. Use the date published - if we can see it - in the same format as we would a YouTube video (e.g. 2023, May 18). If there is no date, we have a few options. Is there a date or month in the URL? Is there a date in the page footer? Was there a dated summary list that you used to access this page (blog posts are often listed in date order)? If none of those bear fruit, we could right-click on the page, bring up the pop-up menu, select 'view code' from the pop-up menu, and see if - in the page code - if there is a created-on date (it is often at the top - header - of the page coding). If we can't find anything, I tend assume that the page is current today, so use the current year. Some people think we should put "n.d."; I personally prefer to put a year - it is useful as a rough timestamp for future revisits
• Title. If there is a title at the top of the webpage, use that as the title. If there is not a title at the top of the page, sometimes the title shows in the website header bar. If so, use that as the page title. If there is nothing in the header bar either, we can use the name of the link we followed, or a plain English version of the URL
• Source. This is simply the URL of the page. Not the main website URL, but the actual page we are reading. With regard to the phrase "Retrieved on [date accessed] from" appearing before the URL, this only needs to be put on websites with 'ephemeral' links which may 'rot' in the short-term. Website storage is now less expensive, and most sites - including newspapers - leave their articles up for years, so this now tends to be less necessary, but the decision and judgement is ours. The general rule that APA apply is "What makes it easiest for the reader to find the materials".

So, taking all that info, if we wanted to cite and reference a Radio New Zealand broadcast, we could reference that as follows:

Radio New Zealand. (2023, May 23). Why a good-enough job should be enough for a good life. https://www.rnz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018905245

Note that for simplicity we do not need the corporate author to be repeated in the Corporate Author spot. Also, as the page we have accessed is not a 'normal' web page, but is a sound file, we should also add the format that the reference is in. As mentioned, in this case, a [radio broadcast]:

Radio New Zealand. (2023, May 23). Why a good-enough job should be enough for a good life [radio broadcast]. https://www.rnz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018905245

And, if we know who was doing the interviewing, we could use the interviewer as the author's name:

Mulligan, J. (2023, May 23). Why a good-enough job should be enough for a good life [radio broadcast]. Radio New Zealand. https://www.rnz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018905245

We would either cite this as (Radio New Zealand, 2023) or (Mulligan, 2023).

The image accompanying this post is a sample guide which I mocked up showing the simplest identifiable author website format.

I hope that is useful!

Sam

References:

Mulligan, J. (2023, May 23). Why a good-enough job should be enough for a good life [radio broadcast]. Radio New Zealand. https://www.rnz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018905245