MyAutsomeFamilyLife: Analyzing Parents of Children with Developmental Disabilities on YouTube

While parents of young children regularly make decisions about sharing content about their child or family online, we know less about how they create, produce, and share video-based content of children with stigmatizing experiences. Through an analysis of publicly available content on YouTube, supplemented with semi-structured interviews, we report on the ways in which parents of children with developmental disabilities produce, share, and interact with others through videos of their children's experiences. Our analysis finds that parents disclose child information on YouTube to build authenticity, connect with others, advocate for social change, and justify monetization and child involvement. We discuss tensions between parents' practices and the ethical complexities of sharing and studying parent-generated content featuring children with disabilities.