J Autism Dev Disord. 2026 Jul 14. doi: 10.1007/s10803-026-07416-y. Online ahead of print.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Wikipedia is a major health information resource, yet little is known about how autism is represented across language editions.
OBJECTIVES: To examine sourcing, framing, editorial dynamics and readership of autism-related Wikipedia pages in six languages (English, Spanish, French, Italian, Norwegian and Georgian).
METHODS: We constructed a corpus of the main autism article in each language and used Python-based pipelines to extract references, revision histories (2004-2024) and monthly pageviews (2020-2024). We conducted descriptive statistics, lexicometric analyses and inductive thematic coding.
RESULTS: Across languages, autism is lexically and thematically framed primarily as a childhood, biomedical condition: child-related terms outranked adult-related terms in all editions, and “neurodiversity” appeared only marginally. Sourcing patterns differed markedly, with English and Italian relying more heavily on journals, French and Spanish on websites, Norwegian on institutional documents and Georgian under-sourced. Pageviews were highly unequal in absolute terms but, once normalised per million speakers, smaller language communities (Georgian, Norwegian and Italian) showed the highest relative demand. These high-demand editions nonetheless had the smallest editorial bases and fewest cumulative edits.
CONCLUSION: Autism-related Wikipedia pages constitute pivotal but uneven knowledge infrastructures. Strengthening adult, lifespan and neurodiversity perspectives and supporting smaller language communities could improve the robustness of online autism information.
PMID:42446867 | DOI:10.1007/s10803-026-07416-y
