Autistic adults online: Understanding and enabling autistic sociality in digital networking environments

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The proposed study will provide a systematic linguistic and ethnographic analysis of how social networking sites/SNS are used by autistic adults for social interaction. The last few decades have witnessed a dramatic increase in the recorded prevalence of autism, with an estimated 1% of the adult population in the UK having an autism spectrum disorder. Most autism research, technology design, and service provision has focused on children and adults who cannot live independently, with little attention to how adults can be supported to succeed in work and social participation. The recognised importance of online networking in initiating and maintaining social connections has led to an increased focus on SNS as spaces of social engagement and social support provision. Our overall aim is to examine how the SNS-based opportunities for interaction and relationship building but also digital surveillance are shaping autistic user experiences, and how the understanding of communicative practices in their social and technological contexts can help design autism-friendly social networking environments.Specifically, the project will pursue the following objectives via four work packages: (1) observe online behaviour of a demographically diverse group of autistic Facebook and Twitter users; (2) conduct semi-structured interviews with these adults to examine both individual motives and social norms shaping their SNS interactions; (3) analyse the extent and the ways autistic SNS users align in online conversation threads; (4) in collaboration with autistic adults, synthesize findings from these analyses, identify the enabling and inhibiting factors emerging from SNS use, and examine the opportunities for software co-design. By drawing on advances in linguistic ethnography, disability studies, and human-computer interaction design we will be able examine the multi-dimensional and dynamic nature of autistic sociality in SNS. The results will inform a broader set of debates about the uses of SNS by socially isolated groups as well as provide empirical understanding of the contextual parameters that shape SNS interaction of autistic users. Such understanding is crucial for moving autism support beyond individualized, behaviour-based interventions and towards community and network-centred approaches.