Inclusive sensory ethnography: Studying new media and neurodiversity in everyday life
Abstract
Media and communication studies has recently begun to ethnographically explore the sensory dimensions of how individuals experience and perceive technology. This turn toward the sensorial has centered primarily on the five “external” senses (sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste) and less so on “internal” vestibular and proprioceptive systems that concern bodily spatial positioning. I propose inclusive sensory ethnography to account for greater neurodiversity in how humans process sensory input, as well as a fuller range of multi-sensory encounters with new media. I ground this conceptualization in a qualitative study of young children on the autism spectrum with difficulties processing sensory information and their social engagements with print, screen, and interactive media. Inclusive sensory ethnography reveals novel understandings of how the internal senses shape and are shaped by mediated relationships, practices, and intimacies. I discuss further implications for how disability and inclusive sensory ethnography can enrich the study of everyday technology use.
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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 [3]
Non-speech cues are central to disabled communicative practices, including those of autistic people, deaf people, and people with aphasia.
“Beyond stuttering, non-speech cues are central to disabled communicative practices [41], including those of autistic people [3], deaf people [55], and people with aphasia [34].”
From Disability-First AI Dataset Annotation: Co-designing Stuttered Speech Annotation Guidelines with People Who Stutter (2026) · cites this paper as [3]
Many accessibility tasks require deeply personal embodied knowledge that disabled people possess, such as sign language translation and disabled people's non-normative communication practices.
“Similarly, as explained in Section 8.1, many accessibility tasks require deeply personal embodied knowledge that disabled people possess, such as sign language translation [12, 95, 97], and disabled people's non-normative communication practices [3, 34, 41].”
From Disability-First AI Dataset Annotation: Co-designing Stuttered Speech Annotation Guidelines with People Who Stutter (2026) · cites this paper as [3]
Failing to address these historical debts risks further marginalizing intelligence central to disability, such as non-speech communication.
“Failing to address these historical debts risks further marginalizing intelligence central to disability, for example, non-speech communication such as gaze, gesture, and embodied interaction [6, 72, 91, 133].”
From Cripping AI: Reimagining AI Through Lived Disability Experiences (2026) · cites this paper as [6]
Cites
Affordance, conventions, and design
Norman, D. A. (1999) · Interactions · doi:10.1145/301153.301168 · Cited by 2,040 · see citing works
Tomchek, S. D., & Dunn, W. (2007) · American Journal of Occupational Therapy · doi:10.5014/ajot.61.2.190 · Cited by 1,534 · cited 1× · see citing works
“Nearly 90–95% of schoolage autistic children reportedly have issues processing sensory input (Leekam et al., 2007; Tomchek and Dunn, 2007).”
BackgroundDescribing the Sensory Abnormalities of Children and Adults with Autism
Leekam, S. R., Nieto, C., Libby, S. J., Wing, L., & Gould, J. (2007) · Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders · doi:10.1007/s10803-006-0218-7 · Cited by 1,140 · cited 2× · see citing works
“Nearly 90–95% of schoolage autistic children reportedly have issues processing sensory input (Leekam et al., 2007; Tomchek and Dunn, 2007).”
BackgroundGillespie-Lynch, K., Kapp, S. K., Shane-Simpson, C., Smith, D. S., & Hutman, T. (2014) · Intellectual and developmental disabilities · doi:10.1352/1934-9556-52.6.456 · Cited by 182 · see citing works
Sensory experiences of children with autism spectrum disorder: In their own words
Kirby, A. V., Dickie, V. A., & Baranek, G. T. (2015) · Autism · doi:10.1177/1362361314520756 · Cited by 95 · see citing works
Autism and new media: Disability between technology and society
Pinchevski, A., & Peters, J. D. (2016) · New Media & Society · doi:10.1177/1461444815594441 · Cited by 83 · see citing works
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Das, M., Tang, J., Ringland, K. E., & Piper, A. M. (2021) · Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1145/3449282 · Cited by 142 · see citing works
Managing Stress: The Needs of Autistic Adults in Video Calling
Zolyomi, A., Begel, A., Waldern, J. F., Tang, J., Barnett, M., Cutrell, E., McDuff, D., Andrist, S., & Morris, M. R. (2019) · Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1145/3359236 · Cited by 101 · see citing works
Tang, X., Li, J., & Wu, S. (2026) · Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3772318.3790405 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
“Neurotypical people may have a narrowed sense of what communication can look like for neurodivergent people, missing multisensory channels [3, 79].”
InfluentialCripping AI: Reimagining AI Through Lived Disability Experiences
Tang, X., Lin, T.-A., Li, J., & Wu, S. (2026) · Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency · doi:10.1145/3805689.3806744 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
“• Questioning ableist assumptions in Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) narratives and practices (e.g., equalizing intelligence to fluency in English [232]); and recognizing forms of intelligence generated through disabled bodyminds (e.g., non-verbal communication forms [6, 72, 91]).”
- Authors
- Alper, M.
- Affiliations
- Northeastern University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Alper, Meryl
- ORCID
- Alper, Meryl
- Venue
- New Media & Society
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2018-02-18
- Volume
- 20
- Issue
- 10
- Pages
- 3560-3579
- ISSN
- 1461-4448 (ISSN-L)
- 1461-7315
- OpenAlex
- W2794285787
- Cited by
- 54
- References
- 6
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 14 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 21.08
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- New Media & Society (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Child Development and Digital Technology
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › Media and Digital Communication
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Disability Rights and Representation
- Keywords
- neurodiversity, autism spectrum disorder, vestibular sense, proprioception, internal senses, sensory processing, new media, children, everyday technology use, disability, media and communication studies
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