Comics as communication: developing more awareness and understanding of high-functioning autistic individuals, through depiction of their lived experience

This research produced a comic in a bid to test whether comics could be utilised to effectively communicate a serious topic: the lived experience of high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (HFA). The research literature suggests that in-depth depictions of the HFA individual’s consciousness are still left largely unexplored in fictional representations. The means of addressing the research inquiry is a comic titled Every Head A World (2023). Comics introduce a wealth of possibilities for communicating ideas effectively, through the medium’s combination of words and imagery. The comic demonstrated the lived experience of HFA respectfully and empathetically, through the synthesis of various lines of research. Due to the vested interest in depicting human experience, the primary framework that this project adheres to is the qualitative research paradigm. Both the pure and heuristic principals of phenomenology have been employed through the methods of recorded interviews, surveys, case studies and systematic review of relevant data. An auxiliary framework, also employed throughout this project, is known as arts-based research (ABR). This is utilised for the creative synthesis of the comic, which acts a means of addressing the inquiry. The nature of arts-based research is noted to be largely multidisciplinary; therefore, phenomenological inquiry is identified as the core methodology in informing theoretical and ontological components of the research. The resulting comic proved that comics have potential and promise for providing commentary on serious topics. The findings in this paper are based upon three phases of conducted fieldwork. Phase I surveys the public for their current perception and understanding of ASD, Phase II interviews high-functioning ASD individuals, and Phase III tests whether the comic addresses the research topic as well as the question posed.