Support, socialise and advocate: An exploration of the stated purposes of Facebook autism groups

Abel, Susan; Machin, Tanya; Brownlow, Charlotte

doi:10.1016/j.rasd.2019.01.009

Cited by 22 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Digital platforms are important to autistic and autism communities as they facilitate social support, information, and community (Abel et al, 2019;Coppala & Hardy, 2017;Loukisasa & Papoudi, 2016;Newton et al, 2009;Nguyen et al, 2015;Saha & Agarwal, 2015Welch et al, 2020). The first autism blog came online in 1991.…”

Section: Online Communities and Bloggingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Divided Communities and Absent Voices: The Search for Autistic BIPOC Parent Blogs

Liang

2022

SSJ

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Both autistic adults and families of autistic children rely heavily on blogs and other digital platforms to create community and gain experiential knowledge about autism, but research on autism blogs has failed to distinguish between the perspectives of autistic adults and neurotypical parent bloggers. Furthermore, intersections in the experiences of BIPOC autistics are rarely examined. Using a content analysis with a feminist Critical Disability Studies lens, I explore six autism parent blogs from diverse demographics: a white neurotypical father, a white autistic mother in an interracial relationship, a white neurotypical mother, an Indigenous autistic trans father, a Black autistic nonbinary mother, and a Black neurotypical mother. I examine the attitudes of these bloggers to get a sampling of their opinions on autism, how they parent autistic children, and how their social location, specifically race, impacts their experiences. More intersectional research needs to be done to boost the perspectives of BIPOC autistics and the expertise of autistic parents.

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Section: Online Communities and Bloggingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The first autism blog came online in 1991. This blog was created to offer information about autism and emotional support to parents (Abel et al, 2019). The advent of web 2.0 led to an explosion of disability communities online including autism and autistic communities (Ellis & Kent, 2011;Haller, 2010).…”

Section: Online Communities and Bloggingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Divided Communities and Absent Voices: The Search for Autistic BIPOC Parent Blogs

Liang

2022

SSJ

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“…For mothers, Facebook is a source of knowledge that enables them to become familiar with concerning issues of parenting and child-rearing by seeking information, comparing themselves with other mothers, assessing their own performance, getting support, and expressing emotions (Archer, 2019;de los Santos et al, 2019;Li & Feng, 2015). Mothers of special-needs or LGBTQ children were found to use social media sites to alleviate feelings of marginalization and stigmatization by interacting with other parents in their position (Abel et al, 2019;Ammari et al, 2014;Ammari & Schoenebeck, 2015). Finally, mothers with infants and young children have found Facebook mothers' groups to be a platform to meet other mothers living nearby in person, coping with their sense of loneliness (Gibson & Hanson, 2013;Lupton, 2016;Lupton & Pedersen, 2016;Morris, 2014).…”

Section: Facebook Usementioning

confidence: 99%

Caregiving strategies, parental practices, and the use of Facebook groups among Israeli mothers of adolescents

Goldberg¹,

Grinshtain²,

Amichai‐Hamburger³

2021

Cyberpsychology

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Facebook offers a “village” for mothers to come together and seek and share parenting information, but while there has been substantial research examining both positive and negative aspects of parents’ Facebook use, there is no research on use of Facebook by mothers of adolescents and its association with parent-adolescent relationships. Given the intense challenges of raising adolescents and the dearth of research into potential benefits and drawbacks of mothers of adolescents seeking support from Facebook, we sought to fill this gap by focusing on the caregiving and parenting practices of mothers of adolescents who were members of mothers’ groups on Facebook. The sample included 74 Israeli dyads of mothers (Mage = 43.73, SD = 4.41), who participated in Facebook groups for mothers and their adolescent children (Mage = 12.26, SD = 3.11) during 2019. Mothers reported on their Facebook use and caregiving strategies. The adolescents answered a parenting practices questionnaire. It was found that higher permissiveness and greater psychological intrusiveness were related to higher use of Facebook by the mothers. Among mothers who were high on hyperactivation, greater permissiveness and psychological intrusiveness were related to higher Facebook use to a greater extent than among mothers who were low on hyperactivation. Alongside Facebook’s benefits as a community for mothers come serious risks for some mothers. As research in this area grows, an examination of the characteristics of Facebook use by mothers of adolescent children involved in Facebook mothers’ groups is meaningful.

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“…In previous studies, the content analysis (e.g. open-coding analysis) (Shi and Xu, 2015; Abel et al , 2019; Roffeei et al , 2015; Boursier et al , 2019) and data mining method (Beykikhoshk et al , 2015) have been used on autism-related UGC. But seldom aimed at studying the information needs.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Information needs and services for autism in China: is there any gap between them?

Song

Chen

et al. 2021

AJIM

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PurposeThis study aims to explore the gap between information needs and services for autism in China.Design/methodology/approachThe gap is revealed by investigating the status quo of autism information needs and services. The authors extracted categories and subcategories of information needs through content analysis of academic documents and then supplemented the subcategories through text mining of an online forum. Meanwhile, categories and subcategories of information services were extracted through content analysis of autism websites. Finally, the authors matched the two to explore the gap and designed a quantitative index to measure it.FindingsA total of eight and ten categories of information needs and services are extracted, respectively. In total, six categories of information needs can be partly matched, but nearly half of the subcategories failed. Huge gaps in economic support, sociality and policy mechanisms categories are observed through the quantitative index and medium gaps in social resource services and employment categories while almost no gaps in psychological/emotional counseling, rehabilitation skills training and professional knowledge/information categories.Originality/valueThis study takes a deep insight into the gap between autism information needs and services in China, providing evidences and suggestions for information providers to improve their services. Academic documents and online forum data are adopted to avoid the impact of stigmatization, which provides a multi-source data analysis approach for the information needs of special groups.

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Support, socialise and advocate: An exploration of the stated purposes of Facebook autism groups

Cited by 22 publications

References 23 publications

Divided Communities and Absent Voices: The Search for Autistic BIPOC Parent Blogs

Divided Communities and Absent Voices: The Search for Autistic BIPOC Parent Blogs

Caregiving strategies, parental practices, and the use of Facebook groups among Israeli mothers of adolescents

Information needs and services for autism in China: is there any gap between them?

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