| dc.description.abstract | Most research conducted on autism and media thus far has not included autistic participants and their reception of media about them. This dissertation offers a triangulated analysis of the construction(s) of autistic sexual subjectivity through reality television, social media engagement fostered by reality television, and myriad sources of autistic community. This project consists of two types of analyses. The first type of analysis is an interpretive textual analysis. This analysis is used for the second season of the Australian version of the reality series entitled Love on the Spectrum. The second type of analysis is thematic analysis, and this is used on both data obtained from interviews with autistic people as well as Twitter data collected from the hashtag #LoveOnTheSpectrum. In this dissertation I argue reality television has been configured as a crucial tool for the development and understanding of sexual belonging for autistic people, most often in opposition to the exclusionary standards found therein. Examining the use of reality television as a technology of the sexual self for a particular group of people, in this case, autistic people, enables deeply contextualized knowledge that also provides insight into how we understand sexuality, gender, disability, and other social constructs more broadly. | |
