Understanding Emotional Dynamics in Autism Social Media Communities.

Abstract

We extracted a sample of X' posts related to autism and used DistilBERT to assign one out of six emotions (sadness, joy, love, anger, fear, surprise) to each post. We have analyzed a total of 414,287 posts, 98,602 (23.8%) of those included the hashtag #ActuallyAutistic. The most common expressed emotion was joy, which was expressed in 52.5% of the posts, followed by sadness, identified in 28.6% of the posts. 12% of the posts expressed fear, 4.9% reflected anger, 1.1% showed love, and 0.9% expressed surprise. Posts tagged as #ActuallyAutistic showed less joy (27.1% vs. 60.4% in posts without this hashtag, p<0.001) and more sadness (52.7% vs. 21.1% in those without the hashtag, p<0.001). The use of the hashtag #ActuallyAutistic is associated with a different emotional tone, characterized by less joy and more sadness. These results suggest the need for greater support and acceptance towards the autistic community, both online and in society in general. Insights from our study can be valuable for policy makers, health, educational or other programmes aiming at enhancing well-being, inclusiveness, improve services, and create a more compassionate and understanding atmosphere for autistic people.