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Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis: This presentation examines the attitudes of the autism community on Twitter. It analyzes how the autism community online uses Twitter to redefine and reclaim the clinical terms that define their lives and perceptions of their behavior and health. It investigates (1) how autism communities online define what it means to be neurotypical, high functioning and low functioning, (2) how these terms impact their quality of life, and (3) what changes to clinical perception the community hopes to accomplish.
Methods: The study employs a mixed methods approach. First, an inductive, qualitative analysis of 3 months of tweets identifies emerging themes, which are applied with text mining and natural language processing methods to two years of tweets from three popular hashtags: #tweetlikeaneurotypical, #highfunctioningmeans, and #lowfunctioningmeans.
Results: Themes included redefinitions of terms. Stimming was construed as an aid rather than impairment to everyday functioning; high functioning, as a deterrent to aid and barrier to acceptance within the autism community; low functioning as insensitive to difference; and neurotypical as an impossible and counterproductive standard. Communities experience and interpret clinical terms—neurotypical, high functioning and low functioning—in ways that extend DSM diagnostic guidelines. The community uses clinical terms to reinterpret self and societal perceptions about their behavior. Findings from the content analysis of hashtag content and a review of PubMed articles trace the evolution of terms and the implications that social redefinitions have on treatment options and clinical practice. How this community redefines and interprets the terms of the condition such as reciprocity, nonverbal cues, swimming and others can help enhance and enrich clinical perception and diagnoses.
Conclusions: Since 2014, the autism and Asperger’s syndrome communities have used these hashtags to share difficulties battling the labels that impose expectations and limitations on them. They advocate using the public sphere to share, recast and reprioritize their private sphere by sharing the social, personal, and lived ramifications of terms labelling neurological diseases (Habermas 1962 and 1989, May 2008). Hashtag activists serve their community by sharing their lived realities. Similar to linguistic reclamations in the Black and LGBT communities, the group recasts the terms with their own valuation (Rahman 2012; Brontsema 2004; Gaucher, Hunt and Sinclair 2015).
Implications for research and/or practice: Emerging themes and dimensions are unique to the lived experience of autism and have potential for improving clinical perception and highlighting potential areas for expanding DSM diagnostic guidelines.