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British Newspapers Portrayal of Autism

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ASPartOfMe
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22 Aug 2024, 10:33 am

Language Matters in British Newspapers: A Participatory Analysis of the Autism UK Press Corpus

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Abstract

Background: Language around autism plays a crucial role in shaping public attitudes toward autistic people. The use of identity-first versus person-first language and impersonal references to autism can affect how autistic people are perceived. These factors should impact the representation of autistic people in newspapers, where negative and stereotypical representations are often perpetuated.

Method: We asked five autistic people to judge the sentiment toward autism and autistic people in 1000 quotes from British newspapers (2011–2020). The coders, who did not know the newspaper title and time of publication, made their judgments based on two dimensions, warmth and competence, from the Stereotype Content Model (SCM). We examined the overall judgments of warmth and competence and considered variations in language context and terminology, such as the use of impersonal references to autism or identity-first and person-first language. We also examined potential differences between broadsheets and tabloids, left- and right-leaning newspapers, and changes over time.

Results: The majority of quotes from British newspapers fell under a low warmth and low competence area within SCM. Furthermore, impersonal references to autism tended to be rated lower in warmth and competence than references linking autism to an individual, whereas identity-first language was judged higher in warmth and competence than person-first language. Quotes from broadsheets were assigned similar warmth and slightly higher competence than quotes from tabloids. However, left-leaning and right-leaning papers did not differ regarding warmth and competence, and there were inconsistent changes over time.

Conclusion: Our study confirms that the portrayal of autistic people in British newspapers tends to be negative. According to autistic raters, associating autism with a person and using identity-first language are linked to more positive representations. Although we found subtle variations in sentiment related to reporting style, our study shows little progress over time toward more positive portrayals.


While the results seem to make “common sense” basing them on 5 unknown autistics makes them unreliable.


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JamesW
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23 Aug 2024, 8:08 am

I agree. I think they'd need a sample of at least a thousand autistic people, and a control group of NTs on the other side. Personally I'd like to see the 1000 quotes myself.

Incidentally, as a Brit who has read a lot of newspapers, I'd venture that the UK press is generally negative on just about everything, not just autism.



carlos55
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23 Aug 2024, 9:05 am

Maybe there is a confusion here portrayal of autism or autistic people.

Autism is a disorder it’s diagnosed on negatives or deficits alone so what sort of positive spin are people expecting.

Communication problems let’s pretend it’s a positive :lol:

Of course if they are talking about autistic people they are probably referring to the condition they have which is as I say a negative so unless that person has unusual positive abilities which is rare the portrayal will come across negative most of the time like any other disorder.

Interestingly no examples have been given to put the article in context.


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cyberdad
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05 Sep 2024, 5:19 pm

this would apply to most countries. I am fairly sure Australian news reports autism with the general tag of "deficit". Journalists internalise the same stigma as the general population that being called autistic is a pejorative. So even if they are trying to be impartial, they might not be aware they are employing language that is stigmatising. the question is whether they are intentionally using such coded language (I hope not) or unintentionally. there is of course the possibility the editors want to give the public what they think they want to hear. My experience with autism related articles is the portrayal of "victims" of a terrible disease or "victims" of society.

Rather than autism as a superpower, the people working with autism are the ones who are put on pedestals. I have had a chance to meet many of the "experts" who work on genetics, therapies and therapeutic technologies related to autism and they get royal treatment from the media. One example recently is a Professor who was on the front page of a newspaper (I don't want to identify them) but the caption read she has helped millions of children with autism and ADHD with an ipad app. As if an video game was the reason millions of children went from "rainman" to "Elon Musk" :roll: