What Do Autistic People Discuss on Twitter? An Approach Using BERTopic Modelling

Gabarron, Elia; Dorronzoro, Enrique; Reichenpfader, Daniel; Denecke, Kerstin (2023). What Do Autistic People Discuss on Twitter? An Approach Using BERTopic Modelling In: Hägglund, M.; Blusi, M.; Bonacina, S.; Nilsson, L.; Cort Madsen, I.; Pelayo, S.; Moen, A.; Benis, A.; Lindsköld, L.; Gallos, P. (eds.) Caring is Sharing – Exploiting the Value in Data for Health and Innovation. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics: Vol. 302 (pp. 403-407). Amsterdam: IOS Press 10.3233/SHTI230161

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Social media provide easy ways to autistic individuals to communicate and to make their voices heard. The objective of this paper is to identify the main themes that are being discussed by autistic people on Twitter. We collected a sample of tweets containing the hashtag #ActuallyAutistic during the period 10/02/2022 and 14/09/2022. To identify the most discussed topics, BERTopic modelling was applied. We manually grouped the detected topics into 6 major themes using inductive content analysis: 1) General aspects of autism and experiences of autistic individuals; 2) Autism awareness, pride and funding; 3) Interventions, mostly related to Applied Behavior Analysis; 4) Reactions and expressions; 5) Everyday life as an autistic (lifelong condition, work, housing…); and 6) Symbols and characteristics. The majority of tweets were presenting general aspects and experiences as autistic individuals; raising awareness; and about their dissatisfaction with some interventions. The identification of autistic individuals' main discussion themes could help to develop meaningful public health agendas and research involving and addressed to autistic individuals.

Item Type:

Book Section (Book Chapter)

Division/Institute:

School of Engineering and Computer Science > Institute for Patient-centered Digital Health
School of Engineering and Computer Science

Name:

Gabarron, Elia;
Dorronzoro, Enrique;
Reichenpfader, Daniel0000-0002-8052-3359;
Denecke, Kerstin0000-0001-6691-396X;
Hägglund, M.;
Blusi, M.;
Bonacina, S.;
Nilsson, L.;
Cort Madsen, I.;
Pelayo, S.;
Moen, A.;
Benis, A.;
Lindsköld, L. and
Gallos, P.

Subjects:

Q Science > Q Science (General)

ISBN:

9781643683881

Series:

Studies in Health Technology and Informatics

Publisher:

IOS Press

Language:

English

Submitter:

Kerstin Denecke

Date Deposited:

24 May 2023 10:28

Last Modified:

25 Oct 2023 13:40

Publisher DOI:

10.3233/SHTI230161

Related URLs:

Uncontrolled Keywords:

Autism Spectrum Disorder Social Media Twitter Topic Modelling BERT

ARBOR DOI:

10.24451/arbor.19236

URI:

https://arbor.bfh.ch/id/eprint/19236

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