Social media and social marketing in relation to facilitated communication: Harnessing the affordances of social media for knowledge translation

Abstract: In this reply to Lilienfeld, Marshall, Todd, and Shane (2015) we provide a social marketing perspective on ways that facilitated communication (FC) is presented and discussed on social media platforms, in the field of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). The growth in uptake and use of FC in recent years has occurred in the context of rapid growth in mobile technologies and AAC integrated with social media and online learning. Social media have been used to disseminate both materials that are supportive of FC and materials that provide scientific evidence of facilitator influence over authorship in FC. In order to illustrate how social media are being used to spread information about FC, we present a limited scan of two social media sites—Twitter™ and YouTube™—for information about FC. In this paper we discuss barriers to evidence and facilitators for FC in social media and consider the role that social marketing might play in relation to FC. Clinical implications for using social media to counter FC and directions for future research are discussed.