The Relationship Between Newspaper Reading Preferences and Attitudes Toward Autism.

Newspapers—particularly certain tabloid and right-leaning publications—often perpetuate negative stereotypes of Autistic people. This study examined how newspaper reading preferences relate to public attitudes toward autism. A sample of 277 UK-based non-autistic adults completed an online survey reporting demographic information, newspaper reading habits (print or online), and trustworthiness ratings for ten major British newspapers. Participants also completed measures of autism-related knowledge and explicit attitudes toward autism, and an implicit bias task. Data were analyzed using generalized additive models weighted by newspaper exposure, along with hierarchical partitioning to estimate the variance explained by reading preferences and other factors. Newspaper-related factors accounted for 4.5% of the variance in explicit attitudes and 10.7% in implicit attitudes. Crucially, selective engagement with right-leaning tabloids was associated with more negative implicit attitudes. Furthermore, selective trust in these outlets predicted relatively favourable explicit but relatively negative implicit attitudes. Overall trust in newspapers was also linked to less accurate autism knowledge. These findings suggest that engagement with media sources portraying autism more negatively is linked to more negative implicit biases toward Autistic people, even when explicit attitudes remain relatively favourable. Future research should explore causal mechanisms and the broader influence of media ecosystems on public perceptions of autism.