Article - Cyberbullying

Bullying, a deliberate and repeated aggression among peers, usually confined to the schoolyard but as the world of ICT has expanded so too has bullying. Bullying using computer mediated communication is known as cyberbullying. It is defined as hurtful and intended forms of communication using any technological device such as the internet or a mobile phone. Unfortunately as the technological world is expanding so too are the methods for bullying. Cyberbullying is becoming more common than regular bullying. It is a lot more appealing as the bullies can hide behind fake names or even use someone else’s screen name.

Cyberbullying is now an emerging universal issue. A nationwide random survey with 1500 participants showed that 9% of internet users between the ages of 10-17 have experienced online harassment. Results from a survey of 384 people under 18 years of age stated that 29% of participants had been victims of online bullying and a staggering 47% had witnessed online bullying.

The forms of online bullying include, being ignored, disrespected, called names, being threatened and having bad rumors spread about them. These studies show the extent that cyberbullying has grown and that it is distinguishing itself from traditional bullying. It differs from traditional bullying because it violates three implicit assumptions of traditional bullying: The victims know who their bully is, there is a power imbalance between the victim and the bully and bullying occurs on and around school grounds. Anonymity plays a big role in the reason for cyberbullying being so appealing. It provides a means of safety for the bully and a much greater chance of getting away with it.

In both cases of bullying it is centres around power. In traditional bullying power is associated with physical or social characteristics, in cyberbullying power is associated with computer literacy. The bully uses flaming, posting inflammatory messages and kicking someone out of a bulletin board. Gender also seems to be an important role in understanding the experiences of both cyber and traditional bullying. However the studies done on the significance of it are inconsistent. A final study in 2006 though did show no gender difference was noted in being of victim of either type of bullying but that more male students reported being a traditional bully or cyberbully. Therefore the main goal for the present study at the time of the article was to explore adolescents’ cyberbullying experiences by clarifying their links to traditional bullying with respect to gender.

But also regardless of gender differences, the relationships between being a cybervictim and cyberbully are significant and much stronger than the relationships between cyber and traditional bullying. This result suggests that the same adolescents who are victims are also bullies in cyber-environments. For both male and female students the results showed that being a bully in cyber and physical environments were correlated, but being a victim in cyber and traditional environments were not. The largest gender differ­ences for both cyber-victimization and cyberbullying were found for traditional bullies. For female students, there are no significant differences in cyberbullying or victimization among the four levels of traditional bullying. However, male students who reported being a traditional bully are more likely to report experiences of cyberbullying. Thus, the gender of students should be considered when examining the relationship between tradi­tional bullying and cyberbullying.

I found this article very interesting because it contrasted to the other article that I found in the benefits of Facebook. Essentially I don’t think that you can have pros without cons and these two articles show that. The role that anonymity plays in all this really interests me too. It brought me back to what you would always here about a bully actually being the bigger coward.  

Link to this article: http://nms.sagepub.com/content/12/1/109.full.pdf+html