Autism in Affinity Spaces

Our first project report – Autism in Affinity Spaces We have published a report, explaining what we have been doing since the project began.

Our project is now two years old!

To find out more about what we've been doing this whole time, you can read our first project report on our website : autisminaffinityspaces.org/our-first-pr...

18.07.2025 07:39 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

If you're an autistic young person (16-26) and would like to write a short blog post sharing your own experiences of social media (both the good, the bad, the in-between) then we'd love to hear from you!

27.06.2025 07:43 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Firsthand experience: Creating a space for advocacy – Autism in Affinity Spaces Read one young person's experience of using social media for advocacy and volunteering

On our blog, we're going to be showcasing some firsthand accounts of how autistic young people use digital media for engaging with intense interests

Read one account here from a young activist, who moderates online spaces to help bring people together:

autisminaffinityspaces.org/firsthand-ex...

27.06.2025 07:42 — 👍 0    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

Workshop: Focused Interests, Identity, and Autistic Communication across Contexts How are focused interests linguistically constructed, socially received, and differently valued? How can we centre them as a strength rather than a symptom? When: January 2026 (date tbc) Where: Queen Mary University of London and Online

Happy Autistic Pride Day!

We're currently organising a workshop for January 2026, based around autistic identity, specific interests, and communication.

How can we centre autistic interests as a strength, rather than a symptom in need of intervention?

Full details TBC - stay tuned.

18.06.2025 11:09 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

When an autistic person is sharing a special interest be mindful that growing up we were often shut down or made fun of for sharing & what you consider “playful teasing” can be taken as mean/hurtful especially if we feel confident/comfy enough to unmask & share something with you or our communities.

16.06.2025 18:54 — 👍 1717    🔁 612    💬 44    📌 52

A word cloud of intense interests. The largest words are autism, mental health, and video games. Other words include books, films, pokemon, adovacy, dogs, dungeons and dragons, doctor who, cats, musical theatre, animals, football, wrestling, animal crossing, and music

Most autistic people have at least one area of highly intense interest (also known as 'special interests')

These interests help to bring joy, structure & meaning to people's lives and can be a big part of somebody's identity.

Here are some of the interests of our survey participants!

29.05.2025 07:59 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

On this account, we'll be sharing project updates including new publications, upcoming events, and ways to get involved.

28.05.2025 08:31 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Hello! This is the new account for Autism in Affinity Spaces project at Queen Mary London. Our linguistics project is examining how autistic young people communicate in online interest-based groups and how we can improve these experiences to build inclusive digital spaces

28.05.2025 08:30 — 👍 14    🔁 5    💬 2    📌 1

Discourse-based approaches to autistic focussed interests: Understanding shared focus, mutual accommodation, and multimodal expression Abstract. Interactions between autistic and non-autistic people are often characterized by misunderstanding and a ‘double empathy problem’ (Milton, Gurbuz,

Thrilled to see the first publication from the Autism in Affinity Spaces (with @nelya-kot.bsky.social and @martinevandriel.bsky.social) now in print with Applied Linguistics: academic.oup.com/applij/advan...

17.02.2025 09:11 — 👍 31    🔁 11    💬 2    📌 0