AutisTikTok: Analyzing top autism hashtags for creator, content, and persistence over time
This publication is included in the Autistic Autism Scholarship Project. The publication reports one autistic author, without identifying them by name.
Karpinsky, M., McFayden, T. C., Waycaster, A., Neal, A., & Harrop, C. (2025). AutisTikTok: Analyzing top autism hashtags for creator, content, and persistence over time. Research in Autism, 128, Article 202720. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.reia.2025.202720
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Authors
Abstract
Purpose Despite the rising popularity of the social media platform TikTok, only a handful of studies have examined the content of autism-related TikTok videos Methods We extracted and coded the top 40 videos from the five most popular autism hashtags at two time points (N = 400 videos; n = 275 after removal of duplicates). Variables of interest included content and creator characteristics, language use, and understandability/actionability Results Videos received up to 5.26B views and 9.5 M likes. Most commonly, creators were self-advocates (61.8 %) and used she/they pronouns (26.6 %). Content was most likely to use identity-first (80.8 %) and nonableist language (70.6 %) about lived experiences (75.7 %) with mixed positive and negative valence (84 %), although varied by creators. TikTok videos were understandable to lay audiences but did not contain actionable information Conclusion Our results suggest the media portrayal of autism on TikTok differs from the medicalized field of autism information and may serve important roles in psychoeducation and belongingness for neurodivergent communities.
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Cited bibliography overview
These indicators describe the bibliography cited by this publication. An author name is counted each time it appears in one cited reference, so the same person can be counted more than once. Names not yet linked to an author already present in AutiHub are treated as unknown, not as non-autistic. Last computed: 28 Oct 2026 01:01.
- With a DOI
- 56
- Without a DOI, from raw bibliography text
- 7
- References with detected author names
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- Without detected author names
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- Without a structured title
- 3
- Without a stable identifier
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- References with raw author names still to review
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- References with external metadata lookup issues
- 1
- From DOI or external metadata
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- From validated raw bibliography text
- 0
- Raw names already validated
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