FIRST-PERSON AUTISM; Mobile Autobiographies of Autistic Women

In an era in which social media provide new spaces for self-representation and serve as fertile ground for promoting identity-based, political, or cultural issues, influencers on the autism spectrum are increasingly using platforms such as Instagram and TikTok to construct first-person digital narratives. Through videos and images, these women raise awareness about autism and engage in feminist advocacy, transforming digital media into tools for both personal and collective empowerment.This paper aims to explore the ways in which these audiovisual narratives function as vehicles for self-affirmation, self-narration, and social inclusion, through the analysis of selected profiles of women on the spectrum. By mobilizing diverse skills and aesthetics, these influencers utilize visual media as arenas for a form of labor directed both toward themselves and toward others, whether neurodivergent or neurotypical, producing content of ethical and aesthetic value. Moreover, while the public display of their lives and their experience of autism operates within a framework of self-assertion and social redemption, it simultaneously acquires a therapeutic dimension for the influencers themselves. From this perspective, social media may be understood as therapeutic media, capable of enabling therapeutic processes through the narration of one’s diagnosis, thereby transforming self-representation into a powerful act of personal care.