Journal article
Identity and Discourse Among #ActuallyAutistic Twitter Users With Motor Differences
Journal of motor learning and development, Vol.11(3), pp.525-540
12/01/2023
DOI: 10.1123/jmld.2023-0007
PMID: 38274158
Abstract
Despite a growing awareness of the prevalence of motor differences in the autistic community, their functional impact is poorly understood. Social media offers the ideal setting to observe this discourse in a less-contrived setting than lab-based structured interviews. The aims of the present study were (a) to determine the proportion of Twitter users who self-identify as autistic and dyspraxic/having developmental coordination disorder, relative to autistic alone, and (b) to identify common themes emerging from two moderated chat threads with motor-related prompts. Using the Twitter research application programming interface, we harvested data from users' public profiles and tweets containing terms related to autism and developmental coordination disorder within a 1-month time period. We also harvested data from two #AutChat threads related to motor skills, which included 151 tweets from 31 unique autistic users (two with co-occurring developmental coordination disorder). Of these tweets, 44 were explicitly about motor differences, while the remainder consisted of discussion topics more loosely associated with motor skills. The following common themes were quantified: manual dexterity, lower extremity, oral motor, gross motor, posture, balance, stimming, movement pain, and coordination. Together, these findings indicate that motor differences are highly recognized and discussed among autistic individuals but are not overtly integrated into their identities at the same rate.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Identity and Discourse Among #ActuallyAutistic Twitter Users With Motor Differences
- Creators
- Riya Chatterjee - University of MichiganNicholas E. Fears - Louisiana State UniversityGavin Lichtenberg - University of MichiganPriscila M. Tamplain - The University of Texas at ArlingtonHaylie L. Miller - University of Michigan
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Journal of motor learning and development, Vol.11(3), pp.525-540
- DOI
- 10.1123/jmld.2023-0007
- PMID
- 38274158
- NLM abbreviation
- J Mot Learn Dev
- ISSN
- 2325-3193
- eISSN
- 2325-3215
- Publisher
- Human Kinetics Publ Inc
- Number of pages
- 16
- Grant note
- National Institute of Mental Health; United States Department of Health & Human Services; National Institutes of Health (NIH) - USA; NIH National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) University of Michigan; University of Michigan System
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 12/01/2023
- Academic Unit
- Health, Sport, and Human Physiology
- Record Identifier
- 9985219864502771
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