Discussions of Autism Parenting, Social Support, and Stigma in the r/Autism_Parenting Reddit Community (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Online communities provide a space for parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to discuss social support needs and experiences with ASD-related stress and stigma. OBJECTIVE This study examined discussions in the Reddit community r/Autism_Parenting (N=971 posts published in October 2024). METHODS We trained a large language model to code posts based on the presence of social support types (informational, emotional, network), positive and negative sentiment, and mentions of stigma, health concerns, or social disruptions. We used chi-square tests to examine associations between post characteristics and t-tests to assess if the presence of post characteristics led to increased engagement. RESULTS Results showed that informational (65.1%) and emotional (53.3%) were the most mentioned types of social support; network support was less common (11.6%). Posts mentioning informational support (X2=55.35; p