Listening to the user's voice: A temporal analysis of autism‐related questions on Quora

ABSTRACT Social question and answer (Q&A) platforms offer a new way for identifying information needs of people with certain diseases. Taking Quora as an example, we examine which health topics are of interest to autistic people and how these topics evolve over time. Experimental results reveal increasingly heavy and diverse attention to the condition, from diagnosis and treatment of autism itself to extended issues like social challenges, parenting, and education issues. We find that users tend to post clinical concerns about autism on Quora although traditionally such social Q&A platforms encourage more social and awareness‐level questions. New concerns have appeared recently about autism's relations to other diseases like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). This study is beneficial for tracking and responding to autistic patients' and caregivers' information needs.