Social media and autism support: Investigation on autism support groups on Facebook

Given the fast permeation of social media into the health domain, this study centers on the investigation of how users interact and communicate within the autism support groups on Facebook. Based on the investigation on one of the largest autism-related group, we found that group members actively involved in the group interactions, and they preferred commenting more than liking and tagging. The group interactions such as making comments and giving “like” to other members’ group posts generated different types of social networks within the group based on group members’ activities. Influential actors emerged from the interaction networks generated from the social network analysis. The findings identified that the group administrator occupied the genuine dominator position from different perspectives. In addition, sentiment analysis discovered that group members expressed more positive emotions than negative emotions through the group communications