What Motivates Internet Users to Search for Asperger Syndrome and Autism on Google?

Raúl Tárraga-Mínguez,Irene Gómez-Marí,Pilar Sanz-Cervera

doi:10.3390/ijerph17249386

Raúl Tárraga-Mínguez, Irene Gómez-Marí + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17249386

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Abstract

Social campaigns are carried out to promote autism spectrum disorder (ASD) awareness, normalization, and visibility. The internet helps to shape perceptions of Asperger syndrome and autism. In fact, these campaigns often coincide with the increase in searches for both diagnoses on Google. We have two study objectives: to use Google Trends to identify the annual time points from 2015 to 2019 with the highest Google search traffic in Spain for the terms “autism” and “Asperger”, and to identify news and trending topics related to ASD that took place during the weeks with the highest number of Google searches for these terms. Google Trend, MyNews and Trendinalia were used to analyze the volume of searches and trending topics related to ASD. As a result, social marketing campaigns, social networks and the publication of news items act as powerful voices that can provide a realistic or sensationalist picture of the disorder. For this reason, we concluded that campaigns play an important role in the normalization of ASD, and that it is important for organizations concerned with the visibility and social inclusion of people with ASD to check the way ASD is portrayed through the internet, media, and social networks.

Highlights

Nowadays, the content of internet searches is an indicator of the issues that concern or interest to the public
To identify the periods of each year when there is a higher volume of Google queries related to autism or Asperger’s, the public database Google Trends was used; to identify possible social events related to the increase in the search volume, information from the MyNews database and from the trendinalia.com platform was used
Ten files in csv format were downloaded from Google Trends: five of them with the information related to Google searches for the term “Asperger”, and the other five with the information related to the searches for “autism”

Summary

Introduction

The content of internet searches is an indicator of the issues that concern or interest to the public. Google search patterns become a valuable indicator that provides us with frequent information requested on internet by users at all times. This information is valuable in areas such as the defense of the rights of people with disabilities, where one of the historical aspirations has been to achieve high levels of social visibility. It can help to identify what kinds of events are contributing to perpetuate stigmatization and false myths about people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

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Conclusion