Media Studies

“Consider what you might want to change about your academic citation practices. Who do you choose to link and re-circulate in your work? Who gets erased? Who should you stop citing?” –Eve Tuck, K. Wayne Yang, and Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández, Critical Ethnic Studies Citation Practices

Citation is more than a process of attribution; it is also a way of positioning your work in context as well as in conversation with other scholars. Naming our sources, influences, and inspirations is a way of illuminated our lineages and showing who we are in dialogue with, who we've engaged with, and what we value. Citations also shape canons, fields of thought, and academic disciplines by affording value and visibility to certain scholars while also excluding others, particularly works and thought from marginalized communities. In this way, citation is both political and fundamentally relational.

In choosing to cite a work or author, we have an opportunity to intentionally address the long-standing erasure of other, often non-dominant, knowledges and the scholarship of historically excluded and marginalized writers, thinkers, and scholars. Ethical citation practices encourage us to reflect on who we are (or are not) citing (and why), critically engage with your fields of study, research, and scholarship, and thoughtfully include, think with, and cite creators and bodies of knowledge.

Dive deeper:

• Making Feminist Points, Sara Ahmed: "I would describe citation as a rather successful reproductive technology, a way of reproducing the world around certain bodies. These citational structures can form what we call disciplines. [...] The reproduction of a discipline can be the reproduction of these techniques of selection, ways of making certain bodies and thematics core to the discipline, and others not even part." 
• Decolonizing Attribution: Traditions of Exclusion, Jane Anderson and Kimberly Christen: “Attribution functions as a key mechanism within a copyright/author/archive matrix which maintains hierarchies of knowledge production by reducing Indigenous and non-European subjectivity and legitimating the ongoing appropriation of Indigenous cultural material by non-Indigenous authors.” 

Citational justice is a framework for inclusive citation that attempts to uplift marginalized voices and knowledges in the process of attribution, as well as in scholarship more generally. It is meant to acknowledge that citation is political, that citation practices often reflect inequities and imbalances of power, and that we can use citation as a way to address the many ways in which marginalized communities and perspectives have been and still are excluded from scholarship and discourse.

Because in many fields marginalized scholars are cited less frequently than dominant groups, we've compiled a series of resources to help you find new thinkers and artists to engage with, and cite, in your research.

• Black Excellence in LIS Spreadsheet - Crowdsourced resource sheet with links to works on Black representation in LIS. As this sheet is co-constructed by the community, please double-check authors’ identities upon citation.
• Black Latinas Know Collective - A collective of Black Latina scholars producing innovative knowledge about race within Latinidad and Blackness. The website lists members of the Collective and shares scholarship on their blog and social media.
• Cite Black Women - "...Cite Black Women as a campaign to push people to engage in a radical praxis of citation that acknowledges and honors Black women’s transnational intellectual production.”
• Cite Indigenous Authors Spreadsheet - "This project was completed as part of the "Indigenous Library and Information Studies in a Canadian context" course at the University of Alberta. It was inspired by the Cite Black Women Collective movement. #CiteIndigenousAuthors is an ongoing community-built resource designed to increase visibility of Indigenous-authored scholarly work.”
• Disabled Writers - This resource is specifically designed to help editors connect with disabled people working in journalism, or trying to break into the field. It also includes disabled experts who are available to serve as sources, such as attorneys, physicians, social workers, artists, and others with professional experience or education that makes them expert sources in their fields.
• Diverse Sources - a searchable database of underrepresented experts in the areas of science, health and the environment. Includes anyone who considers themselves underrepresented (including but not limited to ethnicity, gender, gender expression, gender identity, language, mental health experience, nationality, physical abilities, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, veteran status, etc.)
• Editors of Color Diverse Databases - directory of databases for finding a diverse array of talent and creators from a variety of communities
• NPR Diverse Sources Database - NPR’s resource for journalists who believe in the value of diversity and share our goal to make public radio look and sound like America. Find experts from racial and ethnic groups underrepresented in the media
• People of Color Also Know Stuff - People of Color Also Know Stuff provides a directory of experts of color in political science. Their mission is to promote scholars of color in Political Science and serve as an amplifier for efforts to advance racial diversity and inclusion in the discipline. They aim to advance equity that is inclusive of all class backgrounds, gender identities, sexual identities, and institutional contexts.
• Sourcelist - Sourcelist is a database of qualified experts in technology policy from diverse backgrounds. It is built on the principle that technology policy stands to benefit from the inclusion of the ideas, perspectives, and recommendations of a broader array of people. Its purpose is to aid journalists, conference organizers, and others in identifying and connecting with expert sources beyond those in their existing Rolodexes.
• Women Also Know Stuff - searchable database helps academics and journalists identify and connect with women academics conducting research on a multitude of issues related to the study of politics.
• Women Also Know History - searchable website makes it easier to identify and connect with women historians working in a wide range of fields and professional settings.

You can also consider practices such as the creation of a citation diversity statement or utilizing a citation audit. For another assessment tool, please see the "Gray Test" in the next tab.

In 2015, Dr. Kishonna Gray wrote a blog post titled "#CiteHerWork: Marginalizing Women in Academic and Journalistic Writing," which was also a call to action to make the work of women and marginalized people more visible in academia. As she said, "we must end the practice of only privileging certain voices while marginalizing others." She inaugurated the Twitter hashtag #CiteHerWork so that "people would acknowledge—hey women of color we're out here! And we're producing knowledge!”

"The Gray Test" was developed by Dr. Wendy Belcher, a professor of African literature at Princeton University. This rubric can be used to assess scholarship by the number and usage of citations by women and non-white individuals. As she described it on Twitter, in order to pass the test “a journal article must not only cite the scholarship of at least two women and two non-white people, but must discuss it in the body of the text.”

You can use the Gray Test to assess the inclusivity of scholarship by others or as a way to reflect on your own work and citational practices. Take a look at the list of citations and consider:

• Does the article cite the scholarship of at least two women?
• Does the article cite the work of two scholars of color?
• Does the article actually engage with and discuss the work of these scholars, whether in the text or within foot/end notes (and not only as a parenthetical citation)?

Image: Laurier Course Guides: Tween Literature and Culture

To pass the Gray Test, a work must meet all three of these criteria. While there are a number of ways to consider and assess the value and inclusivity of scholarship and citational practices, and there are many marginalized identities that it does not include, this test can be one tool you use to reflect on your and others' commitment to citational justice.

To learn more about the Gray Test, read the following article from Women in Higher Education (WIHE): "Researching Gaming and Showing Why Citations Matter."

To learn more about the politics of citation, ethical citational practices, and citational justice, try some of the resource below:

• Burbules, N. (2015). The changing functions of citation: from knowledge networking to academic cash-value. Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education, 51(6), 716-726. 
• Delgado, R. (1984). The imperial scholar: Reflections on a review of civil rights literature. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 132(3), 561-578. 
• Delgado, R. (1992). The imperial scholar revisited: How to marginalize outsider writing, ten years later. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 140(4), 1349-1372. 
• Dworkin, J., Zurn, P., & Bassett, D. S. (2020). (In)citing Action to Realize an Equitable Future. Neuron, 106(6), 890–894. 
• Mott, C., & Cockayne, D. (2017). Citation matters: mobilizing the politics of citation toward a practice of ‘conscientious engagement’. Gender, Place & Culture, 24(7), 954-973.
• Ray, V. (2018, April 27). The racial exclusions in scholarly citations (opinion) | Inside Higher Ed. Insidehighered.com.
• Whyte, K. & Hunt, S. (2018). The politics of citation: Is the peer review process biased against Indigenous academics?. CBC Radio.

Adapted from and inspired by:

• BIPOC Citation: Positions, Understandings, and Interruptions (from up//root, a We Here publication)
• Ethical Citation Practices (from Reed College Library's Citation Help guide)
• Citation Justice (from University of Maryland Libraries' Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion in Research guide)
• Citational Justice: Speculative Citation and Pleasure-Oriented Instruction (presentation by Kiana Borjian)
• Citation Guide (from the Female Empowerment Network at Maastricht University)