The monthly frequency of titles about autism and mental/learning disability in Le Monde and The Guardian, between 2008 and mid-2019

- The Guardian

- Le Monde



The peaks of the number of Le Monde articles correspond to the official communication's events: for instance, the first record of 2 articles in May 2008 (while the rest of that years the topic is simply absent) coincides with First Autism Plan initiated by French government in May 2008 (since then, there were three other “plans”); the unusual relatively high frequency between December 2011 and March 2012 corresponds to the preparation and publication of a very critical French Hight Authority of Health's report about autism; however, already in April 2012 the topic disappears, despite the fact that April is declared the month of autism awareness; indeed, there is an impression that some “quota” exists for the topic's related titles, fixed by an idea about the limits of audience interest for it;

the overall number of peaks of number of articles about the topic is distinctively higher for The Guardian than for Le Monde, also they are much higher: the first peak (within the chosen timeline) of the number of articles about the topic in The Guardian corresponds to the UK Autism Bill of January 2009 (18 titles this month);

while the peaks in visibility of the topic are present in both newspapers (with sensible numerical difference), The Guardian demonstrates the stead tendency to increase of the interest toward the topic, while Le Monde seems to up-to-date its interest regarding official declarations or the ritual 2nd of April (the international Autism Day): indeed the frequency of titles increases almost every year around this date but the graph shows clearly that since 10 years the visibility of the mental disability topic on the pages of Le Monde remains very law and barely the same.