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Abstract

YouTube offers potential for many to broadcast their own ideas and concepts to a broad international audience. The take up of YouTube by people with autism as a space for advocacy and awareness raising is discussed in this paper, and the benefits of the environment for enabling people with autism to portray autism in positive and enabling ways are considered. The dis- tinction between knowledge of autism produced within a scien- tific, medicalised deficit framework as opposed to an experien- tial knowledge of those with autism themselves is as evident in online spaces such as YouTube as it is in face to face environ- ments, and the under potential impacts of online spaces on face to face environments zmll be considered.

Keywords

advocacy,

neuro diversity,

self-representation,

YouTube

YouTube: Possibilities for Self-Presentation

Autism is presented in traditional literature through reference to an individual's "impairments." Much of this literature is dominated by the gaze of the medical model, and has been argued to pathologize the differences within individuals (Kapp, 2011). Wing and Gould's (1979) work identifying a triad of impairments associated with autism has been dominant in shaping understandings of autism. Such a triad focuses attention on "impairments" in areas of communication, socialisation and behavioural flexibility. With the imminent arrival of the DSM V, we will see a move towards a dyad of impairments rather than a triad, with social communication and social interaction being combined into one category (Matson, Hattier & Williams, 2012). Whether we draw on a model of triad or dyad of impairments, such powerful representations serve to construct the individual with autism as one of impairment and deficit. In this paper we argue that alternative self- representations may be available to individuals with autism, which may serve to challenge the discourse of deficit.

YouTube is recognised as the predominant online video sharing site currently available for users of online social networks (Burgess & Green, 2009; Lange, 2007; Lovink & Niederer, 2008; Rotman & Preece, 2010). According to YouTube's own statistics, there are over 800 million unique users accessing YouTube each month who watch over 4 billion hours of video (YouTube, n.d.).

In addition to being a media repository, YouTube also offers embedded social networking features (Ellison & Boyd, 2007) which...

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