An Exploratory Network Analysis of Discussion Topics About Autism Across Subreddit Communities

Using an inductive computational approach, our present data exploration sought to use machine learning methodology to define and identify patterns and gain insight into autism-related discussions on Reddit across three different categories of subreddits: (a) individuals who self-identify as autistic, (b) parents of individuals on the autism spectrum, and (c) behavior therapists. By doing so, we sought to review authentic autism-related discussions and identify important topics that emerged across these three demographic groups, including insights related to assessing and treating challenging behavior. Following basic and advanced preprocessing, our extraction resulted in 57 subreddits and 46,914 comments from autism spectrum subreddit members, 46 subreddits and 27,838 comments from parent subreddit members, and six subreddits with 3163 comments from behavior therapist subreddit members. Subsequent network analyses revealed interesting patterns of discussion within and across subreddit groups that may be used to inform support and resources, practice considerations, and future directions for research.