The Behavioral Observations Podcast with Matt Cicoria
While I don't personally use TikTok, I am aware of the considerable influence it has across a range of topics. As many listeners can imagine, Autism is one of those topics that generates unfathomable amounts of content on the platform.Â
Unlike other forms of medical and scientific dissemination, there are really no barriers to saying whatever one wants, not only on TikTok, but on any other internet-based media platforms, podcasts included of course. And as you might imagine, this brings with it lots of variability in terms of information accuracy.
Today's guests, Drs. Elisabeth Sheridan and Giacomo Vivanti, along with their colleagues Diego Aragon-Guevara and Grace Castle, took up the challenge of analyzing the accuracy of Autism-related content on TikTok. They published their results in a recent issue of the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders in a paper titled:Â The Reach and Accuracy of Information on Autism on TikTok.Â
In this interview, we discuss the audience scope on TikTok - spoiler alert: it's massive, why they decided to undertake this study, how they categorized the veracity of the TikTok videos they reviewed, what type of content creators had more and less accurate videos, what were some commonalities to the inaccurate videos they surveyed, and lots more. We also spent some time talking about the reaction to this paper, which has been considerable.Â
Here are the links:
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