Understanding the Use of the Term “Weaponized Autism” in An Alt-Right Social Media Platform

BACKGROUND: The term “weaponized autism” is frequently used on extremist platforms. To better understand this, we conducted a discourse analysis of posts on Gab, an alt-right social media platform. METHODS: We analyzed 711 posts spanning 2018–2019 and filtered for variations on the term “weaponized...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Welch, Christie, Senman, Lili, Loftin, Rachel, Picciolini, Christian, Robison, John, Westphal, Alexander, Perry, Barbara, Nguyen, Jenny, Jachyra, Patrick, Stevenson, Suzanne, Aggarwal, Jai, Wijekoon, Sachindri, Baron-Cohen, Simon, Penner, Melanie
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2022
Materias:
Original Paper
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10499683/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35947316
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10803-022-05701-0
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author Welch, Christie
Senman, Lili
Loftin, Rachel
Picciolini, Christian
Robison, John
Westphal, Alexander
Perry, Barbara
Nguyen, Jenny
Jachyra, Patrick
Stevenson, Suzanne
Aggarwal, Jai
Wijekoon, Sachindri
Baron-Cohen, Simon
Penner, Melanie
author_facet Welch, Christie
Senman, Lili
Loftin, Rachel
Picciolini, Christian
Robison, John
Westphal, Alexander
Perry, Barbara
Nguyen, Jenny
Jachyra, Patrick
Stevenson, Suzanne
Aggarwal, Jai
Wijekoon, Sachindri
Baron-Cohen, Simon
Penner, Melanie
author_sort Welch, Christie
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The term “weaponized autism” is frequently used on extremist platforms. To better understand this, we conducted a discourse analysis of posts on Gab, an alt-right social media platform. METHODS: We analyzed 711 posts spanning 2018–2019 and filtered for variations on the term “weaponized autism”. RESULTS: This term is used mainly by non-autistic Gab users. It refers to exploitation of perceived talents and vulnerabilities of “Weaponized autists”, described as all-powerful masters-of-technology who are devoid of social skills. CONCLUSIONS: The term “weaponized autism” is simultaneously glorified and derogatory. For some autistic people, the partial acceptance offered within this community may be preferable to lack of acceptance offered in society, which speaks to improving societal acceptance as a prevention effort.
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spelling pubmed-104996832023-09-15 Understanding the Use of the Term “Weaponized Autism” in An Alt-Right Social Media Platform Welch, Christie Senman, Lili Loftin, Rachel Picciolini, Christian Robison, John Westphal, Alexander Perry, Barbara Nguyen, Jenny Jachyra, Patrick Stevenson, Suzanne Aggarwal, Jai Wijekoon, Sachindri Baron-Cohen, Simon Penner, Melanie J Autism Dev Disord Original Paper BACKGROUND: The term “weaponized autism” is frequently used on extremist platforms. To better understand this, we conducted a discourse analysis of posts on Gab, an alt-right social media platform. METHODS: We analyzed 711 posts spanning 2018–2019 and filtered for variations on the term “weaponized autism”. RESULTS: This term is used mainly by non-autistic Gab users. It refers to exploitation of perceived talents and vulnerabilities of “Weaponized autists”, described as all-powerful masters-of-technology who are devoid of social skills. CONCLUSIONS: The term “weaponized autism” is simultaneously glorified and derogatory. For some autistic people, the partial acceptance offered within this community may be preferable to lack of acceptance offered in society, which speaks to improving societal acceptance as a prevention effort. Springer US 2022-08-10 2023 /pmc/articles/PMC10499683/ /pubmed/35947316 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10803-022-05701-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Original Paper
Welch, Christie
Senman, Lili
Loftin, Rachel
Picciolini, Christian
Robison, John
Westphal, Alexander
Perry, Barbara
Nguyen, Jenny
Jachyra, Patrick
Stevenson, Suzanne
Aggarwal, Jai
Wijekoon, Sachindri
Baron-Cohen, Simon
Penner, Melanie
Understanding the Use of the Term “Weaponized Autism” in An Alt-Right Social Media Platform
title Understanding the Use of the Term “Weaponized Autism” in An Alt-Right Social Media Platform
title_full Understanding the Use of the Term “Weaponized Autism” in An Alt-Right Social Media Platform
title_fullStr Understanding the Use of the Term “Weaponized Autism” in An Alt-Right Social Media Platform
title_full_unstemmed Understanding the Use of the Term “Weaponized Autism” in An Alt-Right Social Media Platform
title_short Understanding the Use of the Term “Weaponized Autism” in An Alt-Right Social Media Platform
title_sort understanding the use of the term “weaponized autism” in an alt-right social media platform
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10499683/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35947316
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10803-022-05701-0
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