SynthesisAutism : the international journal of research and practice2023
Representation of autism in fictional media: A systematic review of media content and its impact on viewer knowledge and understanding of autism.
Synthesis in Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Brief Report: Virtual Reality to Raise Awareness About Autism.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2025Trial
- Effect of Autism Portrayal in Television and Film Media on Viewers With Autism.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2026Article
- The relationship between newspaper reading preferences and attitudes towards autism.Autism : the international journal of research and practice · 2026Article
- Biased mental face representations of autistic children in the general population.Molecular autism · 2026Article
- Accuracy of Autism-Related TikTok Information in Italian: A Comparison Between Human Raters and Large Language Models.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2026Article
- Perspective of Turkish society toward autistic individuals: Personal experiences, knowledge, and interaction comfort.PloS one · 2026Article
- How Diagnostically Accurate are #Autism Portrayals? A Latent Space Item Response Modeling Approach.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2025Article
- A novel screening instrument for the assessment of autism in German language: validation of the German version of the RAADS-R, the RADS-R.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2025Article
- Awareness of autism spectrum disorder among public primary school teachers in Iraq.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Comparing the portrayal of #autism and #neurodiversity on TikTok: creators, content, and representation.Wiener medizinische Wochenschrift (1946) · 2025Article
- Validating the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health Core Sets for Autism in a Sample of Australian School-Aged Children on the Spectrum.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2025Article
- Development and Initial Validation of the Autism and Neurodiversity Attitudes Scale.Autism in adulthood · 2025Article
- Article
- Visualization analysis for emotional characteristics of autism spectrum disorder from cinemetrics perspective.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- 'Most people have no idea what autism is': Unpacking autism disclosure using social media analysis.Autism : the international journal of research and practice · 2024Article
- Editorial: Break the stigma: autism. The future of research on autism stigma - towards multilevel, contextual & global understanding.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
- Spanish media coverage of youth mental health issues during the COVID-19 pandemic.BMC psychiatry · 2023Article
- Teaching higher education staff to understand and support autistic students: evaluation of a novel training program.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
lay abstractThe way autism is represented in fictional media can impact people's views of autistic people. For example, representations may contribute to negative views of autistic people as being unusual or dangerous, or they may challenge stereotypes and instead highlight the strengths of autistic people. This work aimed to review previous research to understand how autistic people have been represented in fictional media (Part A). It also sought to understand whether viewing fictional portrayals of autism has an impact on people's knowledge of autism and attitudes towards autistic people (Part B). Of 14 studies that were included in Part A, several unhelpful and stereotypical portrayals of autism emerged. Positive portrayals were those that highlighted the strengths of autistic people and reflected nuance. There is a need for greater diversity in representation of autism in fictional media. For example, not all autistic people are white heterosexual males. Across the five studies included in Part B, there were no improvements in people's knowledge of autism after watching or reading a short segment from a fictional TV series or novel that depicts an autistic person. Although there was a significant improvement in people's attitudes towards autistic people, these findings do not provide a complete picture given the short length of the media exposure and small number of studies. Future studies should investigate how multiple exposures to the representation of autistic people in both fictional and non-fictional sources can affect people's understanding of autism. There is also a need to develop more accurate and respectful ways of measuring people's knowledge of, and attitudes towards, autism.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.