AUTISM IN THE DISCOURSE OF THE RUSSIAN MASS MEDIA: CONSTRUCTING OF THE IMAGE OF A HUMAN WITH ASD

Abstract

The prevalence of autism is growing, the problems of stigmatization and discrimination of people with autism spectrum disorders in society are exacerbating. The mass media play an important role in enlightening and reducing stigmatizing effects, in connection with which the goal was formulated to study the construction of images of a person with ASD in the mass media by the method of qualitative and discourse analysis of video clips from the federal channel. According to the results of the study, it can be argued that the range of characteristics used to describe people with autism in media discourse is diverse, but in retrospect, dominant interpretation models can be identified. At an early stage, the prevailing image of a person with ASD was deprived of the quality’s characteristic of normotypical people who do not want to leave their world. People diagnosed with autism were referred to as the intolerant category of "autistic". Since 2013, there has been a discursive turn, within which the category “autist” is replaced by tolerant speech patterns, adults with autism get into the lens of the media, the topic of uncommunicability as a property of a person with autism is replaced by the intention of the lack of opportunities to communicate, one of the reasons for which is social exclusion. In television stories of recent years, the mass media are actively constructing the image of a person with autism spectrum disorder through his inner world, through the advantages that a person with ASD can have due to his characteristics. However, it cannot be said that there has been a complete change of the image: the old cliches, as a rule, manifest themselves at a more latent level of grammatical constructions and semiotic meanings.