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Media play a significant role in the process of raising public awareness about autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Despite an increase in ASD media coverage, there is scarcity of research that examines how the actual frame is constructed and how the news stories are narrated. This study aims to examine the extent to which Finnish print media papers extend medical and societal narration of ASD to other issue domains and the extent to which newspaper stories use a positive, negative or neutral narrative.

The authors analyzed 210 full newspaper reports from the largest daily appearing newspaper by circulation in Finland from 1990 to 2016. The authors used the newspaper’s electronic database to conduct a systematic papers search. The authors then used coding scheme about news story framing, which was followed by a detailed content analysis of the papers.

Approximately two-thirds of the papers consisted of a straightforward informational or clinical lens to educate the public (n = 110). This is in line with international studies. However, the authors’ analysis revealed four additional themes of medical and societal ASD reporting.

The study increases understanding about how the media can shape the public perception of ASD, which in turn might influence how autistic individuals are accepted in the society, as well as how they feel that they belong.

While ASD itself is at the center of neutral news reporting, this study’s results imply how to construct ASD from new paradigms. Linking ASD to a culture, and thus extending it to the more commonly accepted notion of deafness as a culture, might shape the public’s perceptions about ASD.

The objective of the research is to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the conceptual structure underlying global trends in the utilization of VR/AR for learning purposes among autistic children and adolescents.

With a sample of 57 documents obtained from different databases in the period 2010–2022, a scientific mapping was developed using the bibliometrix library designed in R.

It has been found that there are three main lines of work. The first with VR/AR with emotion recognition and theory of mind. Another line focused on “young children” that works on visual attention, simulation play and social communication. The third line is focused on adolescents with subthemes such as executive function, attention, social skills and learning environments.

The research allows the authors to design activities in those areas where the use of VR/AR has been successful. In this way, future implementation of these tools in the classroom is encouraged.