Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying: Annotated Bibliography
Evans, C.B.R., Cotter, K. &. Smokowski, P. (2017). Giving victims of bullying a voice:
A qualitative study of post bullying reactions and coping strategies. Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal, 34, 543–555.
All too often, the focus of research on bullying is on the perpetrators’ motivations, rather than the long-term negative impact upon the victims. This article is valuable because it addresses the fact that adolescents who are bullied are more apt to suffer from loneliness and a sense of social isolation. Its qualitative approach, via interviewing 22 victims from the same rural setting, was designed to solicit information directly from victims themselves, and has the additional value of allowing victims to speak in their own voices of the personal impact of bullying. Coping strategies included directly asking for help from adults, and also negative strategies such as lashing out physically and verbally.
Although the study does not specifically focus upon cyberbullying, it offers documentation of the impact bullying can have on the mental health of victims. It also demonstrates how both negative and positive coping strategies may be deployed by the victim. The study surveyed middle school-age and high school-age participants, so offers a comparison of how different developmental groups may struggle with bullying. High schoolers were more apt to have suicidal ideation and engage in negative reflection about the self. Some of the most deeply affected participants reported experiences of post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD). All students reported skipping school to avoid their bullies. Parents and teachers showing sympathy and reaching out were identified as extremely helpful in counteracting the effects of bullying, versus ignoring the victimization and evident distress of the victims. Solutions as well as problems are thus identified by the article.
Reason, L. & Boyd, M. (2016). Cyberbullying in rural communities: Origin and processing
through the lens of older adolescents. The Qualitative Report, 21(12), 2331-2348.
Because cyberbullying takes place in a virtual environment, it is often viewed as something that has little connection or relevance to the world around the individuals who perpetrate it and who are victims. But this is not the case. This article makes it clear that the larger exterior world can have a significant impact upon how bullying is expressed. In fact, in rural areas which have less exposure to diversity in terms of sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, and other attributes, cyberbullying can be particularly toxic. The article is also useful because it is a reminder of how certain populations and communities are particularly prone to engage in bullying such as adolescents. As social media use among adolescents continues to climb, the prevalence of cyberbullying is a rising concern.
This article was also selected because it reflects an attempt to address an under-studied aspect of the existing literature. Previous studies had tended to focus upon urban environments and victims of lower socioeconomic status, even though statistical evidence suggests that rural areas are more rather than less prone to the phenomena of cyberbullying. The article also offers a general analysis about why some individuals may engage in cyberbullying, but not engage in other types of physical, face-to-face bullying, such as the anonymity provided by the Internet and the physical and emotional distance from the victim.
The approach used by the researchers was direct and involved in the form of a qualitative, phenomenological design designed to directly solicit information from the participants. The study was conducted on former high school graduates in a virtual space, which offers a useful perspective as well on how research about online phenomena can make use of online media to collect data. Triangulation of data was used to improve data quality, including using evidence from transcriptions, Twitter microblog writings, and reflexivity logs.
Roberto, A. J., Eden, J., Deiss, D. M., Savage, M. W., & Ramos-Salazar, L. (2017). The short
term effects of a cyberbullying prevention intervention for parents of middle school students . International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 14(9), 1038. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14091038
This study specifically focuses on the negative effects of cyberbullying, and the impact of Arizona’s cyberbullying prevention programming. The subjects encompassed the parents of middle school children within the state who took the educational course. Parents who participated in the state-run anti-bullying program were more apt to believe that their children could potentially be victims or perpetrators, and were more apt to talk to their children about how to effectively cope with cyberbullying (such as telling an adult, not deleting the online evidence, and not attempting to handle the matter themselves through lashing back at the other students). This suggests that the program was helpful, and reaching out to educate parents might be helpful cyberbullying reduction strategy rather than solely placing the burden on teachers and children. It also suggests that states taking the initiative to embark upon an outreach program for parents may be valuable.
This article is useful, because one of the reasons for studying cyberbullying is undoubtedly prevention, and the article assesses the effects if an evidence-based implemented program that appeared to be effective. Greater vigilance over children’s Internet behavior is associated with lower rates of cyberbullying. Its approach is structured and stresses both enhancing the perceived threat, and the active strategies parents must take to reduce as well as treat the threat.