Social media and social marketing in relation to facilitated communication: Harnessing the affordances of social media for knowledge translation

Abstract

In this reply to Lilienfeld, Marshall, Todd, and Shane (2015) we provide a social marketing perspective on ways that facilitated communication (FC) is presented and discussed on social media platforms, in the field of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). The growth in uptake and use of FC in recent years has occurred in the context of rapid growth in mobile technologies and AAC integrated with social media and online learning. Social media have been used to disseminate both materials that are supportive of FC and materials that provide scientific evidence of facilitator influence over authorship in FC. In order to illustrate how social media are being used to spread information about FC, we present a limited scan of two social media sites—Twitter^TM and YouTube^TM—for information about FC. In this paper we discuss barriers to evidence and facilitators for FC in social media and consider the role that social marketing might play in relation to FC. Clinical implications for using social media to counter FC and directions for future research are discussed.

Keywords:

• Social media marketing
• Facilitated communication
• Knowledge translation
• Augmentative and alternative communication
• Science communication.

Acknowledgements:

The authors would like to thank and acknowledge the two research assistants who assisted in coding of the data.

Notes

¹ Twitter^TM 1355 Market Street Suite 900 San Francisco 94103USA.

² YouTube^TM LLC 901 Cherry Ave. San Bruno, CA 94066USA.

³ Facebook^TM Headquarters 1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park California USA.

⁴ Google Translate^TM Google Headquarters 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View
CA 94043.

⁵ Instagram^TM Headquarters Instagram 1 Hacker Way Menlo Park CA94025 USA.

⁶ Wikipedia^TM Headquarters Wikimedia Foundation 149 New Montgomery Street, 6th Floor, San Francisco, California, CA 94105, USA.

⁷ SlideShare^TM Headquarters SlideShare 505 Howard Street, 4th Floor, San Francisco, CA94105 California.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded in part by the Australian Research Council, through a Discovery Early Career Research Award to the first author.