Neurodiversity and deficit perspectives in The Washington Post’s coverage of autism

Abstract

Media representations can perpetuate stereotypes about marginalized groups. Autism is often portrayed as a series of deficits needing correction. Many autistic self-advocates argue, however, that their neurological characteristics represent natural genetic variation—neurodiversity—and that they are not in need of a “cure.” The current study examined articles about autism on The Washington Post website from January 2007 through December 2016. It was hypothesized that articles would contain more elements of the neurodiversity perspective over time. Each article was coded for its overall valence, four measures of neurodiversity, and four deficit measures. Mean valence and mean composite neurodiversity scores significantly increased over time, while the mean composite deficit score significantly decreased over time. While the data suggest positive trends towards the neurodiversity perspective, they also reveal that some aspects of the deficit view of autism did not change over this time period in this news outlet.

Points of interest

• Autism is often portrayed as entirely negative, but it has been argued that autism represents a form of diversity (neurodiversity) that should be recognized and respected.

• The current study examined how autism was portrayed in an influential US newspaper (The Washington Post) from 2007 to 2016.

• Later articles about autism were more likely to use words like neurodiversity, more likely to highlight strengths of autistic people, and more frequently described accommodations for autistic people. They also focused less on identifying causes of autism but continued to use negative terms and very few articles contained the perspectives of autistic individuals themselves.

• Although some progress seems to have been made in the portrayal of autism, there is still room for improvement.

Keywords:

• Autism
• neurodiversity
• content analysis
• The Washington Post

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Vikram K. Jaswal, Janette Dinishak and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on prior drafts of this manuscript. Thanks also to Doug Bonett for his assistance with statistical analyses.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).