Autism and new media: Disability between technology and society
Abstract
This article explores the elective affinities between autism and new media. Autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) provides a uniquely apt case for considering the conceptual link between mental disability and media technology. Tracing the history of the disorder through its various media connections and connotations, we propose a narrative of the transition from impaired sociability in person to fluent social media by network. New media introduce new affordances for people with ASD: The Internet provides habitat free of the burdens of face-to-face encounters, high-tech industry fares well with the purported special abilities of those with Asperger’s syndrome, and digital technology offers a rich metaphorical depository for the condition as a whole. Running throughout is a gender bias that brings communication and technology into the fray of biology versus culture. Autism invites us to rethink our assumptions about communication in the digital age, accounting for both the pains and possibilities it entails.
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Neurotypical people may have a narrowed sense of what communication can look like for neurodivergent people, missing multisensory channels.
“Neurotypical people may have a narrowed sense of what communication can look like for neurodivergent people, missing multisensory channels [3, 79].”
From Disability-First AI Dataset Annotation: Co-designing Stuttered Speech Annotation Guidelines with People Who Stutter (2026) · cites this paper as [79]
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- Authors
- Pinchevski, A., & Peters, J. D.
- Affiliations
- Hebrew University of Jerusalem (IL)
- University of Iowa (US)
- Corresponding author
- Pinchevski, Amit
- Venue
- New Media & Society
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2016-07-09
- Volume
- 18
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 2507-2523
- ISSN
- 1461-4448 (ISSN-L)
- 1461-7315
- OpenAlex
- W1495813335
- Cited by
- 83
- References
- 49
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 18 · 2019: 15 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 2
- FWCI
- 7.75
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- New Media & Society (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Disability Rights and Representation
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Autism Spectrum Disorder Research
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Cybernetics and Technology in Society
- Keywords
- autism spectrum disorder, new media, disability, social media, Asperger syndrome, technology and society, gender bias, digital communication, history of autism, high-tech industry
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