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Difference between Bullying and Cyberbullying (Pisano, Saturno 2008)

Cyberbullying Features

Bullying Feature

It can involve youngsters and adults worldwide. Anyone, including who’s a victim in real life or has got a low social profile, can become a cyberbully. Cyberbullies can be anonymous and encourage other friends to play an anonymous role as well so that the victims don’t have any knowledge of whom they are dealing with. Cyberbullying material can be spread all over the world. Online communication can be particularly sadistic. Aggressive comunication can happen 24/7. High Disinhibition: cyberbullies tend to do online what they wouldn’t in real life. The perception of invisibility according to the cyberbully: “You cannot see me! ”Cyberbullies lack of tangible feedbacks about their work: “I can’t see you!” and have a consequent insufficient awareness of the outcome of their actions. Depersonalization: the consequences of their own actions are addressed to the “personas” or “avatars” which have been created.

It only involves students who belong to a specific class or institute. Generally only the bully, his/her supporters and the victim who sometimes becomes bully him/herself carry out harassment. Bullies are students, classmates or schoolmates whom are known by the victim. Bullying actions are told and spread among other students of the same school where they happend or among friends who go to different schools in the nearby area. Bullying, rarely, turns into a sadistic action unless It’s carried out by minority criminality. Bullying actions take place during school or during the journey from home to school and back. Medium level disinhibition encouraged by what happens in the class. The need of the bully to overbear on the interpersonal relationships in order to draw all the attention on him/her. Presence of feedbacks from the victim, which the bullies are not concerned about. Awareness but cold cognition. Avoiding responsibility: “We are joking”, “It’s not my fault”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Websites where to post offensive material (Pisano, 2007)

Some of the websites where students can post offensive material

www.google.it
www.yahoo.it
www.youtube.com
www.metello.com
www.scuolazoo.com

They are usually categorized as: Comedy, Science and Tecnology, Entertainment, Funny Videos, Students in school, Anthony Vs Paul, Fight, etc.

 

Statistics – Use of new technologies (Istat – Institute of the innocents 2006, Italy)

Mobile phone ownership		Mobile phone, between  6 and 17 years old, is used as follows		Use of the internet between i 6 and 17 years old:
6-10 years old	20,9%	telephoning	89%	6-10 years old	13%
11-13 years old	35,2% in 2000 74,3% in 2005	sending text  messages	84,1%	11 -13 years old	39%
14 -17 years old	70,4% in 2000 90% in 2005	playing games	39,9%	14 -17 years old	62%
		making and  receiving  pictures	24,1%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WARNING!

High use of mobile phones and internet can make children and teenagers victims of harassment and cruel actions, or can make them carry out these actions ON LINE themselves.

 

Phenomenon spread (Smith, 2007)

UK

2005, NCH (Formerly National Children’s Home) has produced a survay of 770 young people aged 11-19 on cyberbullying in England.

20% had been bullied or threatened by some sort of cyberbullying,14% had been bullied or threatened through text messages, 5% through chat-room and 4% through email.

In addition 10% reported being photographed by a mobile phone camera and feeling threatened, and of these, 17% reported they felt that the image had been sent to someone else. Also, 11% claimed to have sent a bullyingor threatening message to someone else.

2006, Noret and Rivers surveyed 11,227 pupils aged 11-16, asking: “How often have you received any nasty or threatening text messages or emails? ”Altogether 7% reported this at least ‘once in while’; girls more than boys. (Smith et al.,2006)

Smith et al. Investigated 92 students aged 11-16 years, from 14 London schools.

The research includes numerous types of cyberbullying. Seven common at the time of writing (Smith, Malhdavi, Carvalho and Tippet, 2006) are:

1) via mobile phone:

• mobile phone call bullying (e.g. abusive or silent calls);
• text message bullying (via abusive text messages);
• picture/video clip (via mobile phone cameras, includes taking a picture or clip of someone else in order to use it an abusive manner e.g. sending it to others or uploading it onto a website).

 

2) via internet:- email (sending or receiving abusive emails);

• chat –room bullying (being abusive or being abused whilst evolved in chat room features);
• bullying through instant messaging (e.g. msn which is a form of a meeting community where others can see when you are logged in and send and receive instant messages);
• bullying via website (e.g. create a website which is abusive towards a specific person; download information in an already existing website.

 

They reported that 22% of pupils had been victims of cyberbullying at least once, and about 7% more frequently, over the last couple of months.

Phone call, text messages and email were the most common forms of cyberbullying both inside and outside of school, while chat room bullying was the least common. Prevalence rates of cyberbullying were greater outside of school than inside.

SWEDEN

2006, Slonje e Smith investigated cyberbullying in 360 Swedish pupils aged 12 to 20 years.

The most common forms of cyberbullying were email and picture/video clip bullying, closely followed by phone, call and text message bullying.

Almost 12% of pupils were victimisedby cyberbullying and 10% admitted cyberbullying others. A higher occurrence of cyberbullying took place outside of school compared to at school.

The pupils also perceived that adults were not aware of electronic bullying to the same extent as traditional bullying.

FINLAND

2007, Salmivalli and colleagues are collecting a large data set from schools across Finland that includes questions on cyberbullying.

Respondents are from grades 3,4,and 5 (ages 9,10 and 11 years); with some 6,500 respondents so far, the proportion of students exposed to cyberbullying ‘once or twice a month’ or more often is 2.2% (girls 2.4%, boys 2.0%)

BELGIUM

Vandebosh surveyed 2,052 primary and secondary school pupil in Flanders.

The most common forms of cyberbullying behaviour were; insults or threats, deception, spreading gossip and breaking into someone’s computer and changing their password.

Over the past three months 62% had experienced such victimisation (experienced at least one form of potentially offensive behaviour), 53% reported being perpetrators and 76% said they had been bystanders. These figures are high compared to other studies, perhaps because of differences in defining cyberbullying behaviour (e.g. including deception).

The majority of pupils (64%) believed cyberbullying to be a ‘big problem’.

Boys more often than girls tried out various deviant internet and mobile phone activities. It was found that the more advanced internet skills one had, the more likely one was to have experience with deviant internet and mobile phone activities.

The perpetrators had better self-image, and parents who were less involved with their computer and internet use.

Finally, there was a positive correlation between carrying out offensive behaviours in the offline and online world.Some of the predictors for being a cybervictim were being a girl, and involvement in deviant internet and mobile phone activities as perpetrator or bystander.

There was also a positive correlation between social competence and victimisation; as the authors argue, this last predictor may seem unexpected , however it may be that socially competent youth are more involved in online interaction, and hence more exposed to cyberbullying behaviour.

THE NETHERLANDS

2006, Van den Eijnden, Vermulst, Rooij and Meerkerk surveyed 4,500 students aged 11-15 years in 2006.

Negative online experiences were very common (e.g. 35% being insulted), and 17% reported being cyberbullied once a month or more and 3%  once a week or more.

Boys, and students with a lower educational level, had greater risk of being bullied, but the largest risk factors for being bullied on the internet were being bullied in traditional ways, being a perpetrator of online bullying, and having online contacts with strangers.

GREECE

2007, Kapatzia and Syngollitou investigated cyberbullying in 554 Greek students aged 14-19 years, using an adaptation of the questionnaire from Smith et al. (2006).

The prevalence rates for victims were: 15% once or twice, and 6% two or three times a month or more. The corresponding figures for being a cyberbully were 9% once or twice, and 7% two or three times a month or more.

The occurrence of cyberbullying both for victims and bullies, and for both mobile phone and internet bullying, was greater outside of school than in school.

There was only one age difference, younger pupils bullied others via mobile phones more outside of school. Boys more than girls admitted cyberbullying others using mobile phones, but girls were more often involved in internet bullying, both as victims and perpetrators.

CANADA

2006 An investigation has been carried out on 264 students. Around 25% of them admit to have been victims of cyberbullying, whereas the 17% say they have bullied someone of the same age.

AUSTRALIA

2005, Campbell and Gardner reported that 14% of 120 year 8 students (aged 13) had been targeted by cyberbullying, and 11% had bullied others.

The most prevalent method was bullying by text messaging, followed by chat room bullying and bullying through email. Over half of the sample investigated thought cyberbullying was on the increase.

USA

2004, Ybarra and Mitchell (2004) surveyed internet use in 1,501 youths aged 10–17 years.

Over the last year, 12% reported being aggressive to someone online, 4% were targets of aggression, and 3% were both aggressors and targets.

Those who used the internet more at home, were more involved as aggressors or victims; and aggressor/victims used it more frequently than non-involved youths.

These authors hypothesised that some victims of conventional bullying may use the internet to attack others, in a form of compensation or revenge that is less dangerous to them than face-to-face attack.

2006, Ybarra, Mitchel, Wolak and  Finkelhor found that 9% youths had been targets of internet harassment, and 38% of theme reported distress as a result.

2007, Raskauskas and Stoltz surveyed 84 students in the USA aged 13-18 years, of whom 49% were cybervictims (compared to 71% traditional victims) and 21% were cyberbullies (compared to 64% traditional bullies) at least once or twice over the last school year.

Many cybervictims were also traditional victims, and most cyberbullies were also traditional bullies. The hypothesis that some traditional victims might also be cyberbullies (from Ybarra & Mitchell, 2004) was not supported.

Cross-national

2006, Three related studies have used internet based surveys. These get participiants from a range of countries (although in these particular studies the majority of participiants were from the US) and backgrounds, who choose to respond.

Patchin and Hinduja conducted a survey in 2004 (asking you that visited a music artist’s official website) and obtained participiants aged 9 to 26 (and above).

Out of these 67% were younger then 18 and of these, three-quarters were female. Regarding ever having been involved, almost 11% admitted being internet bullies and about 30% reported internet victimisation.

Of different media of cyberbullying, the most prevalent were chat room bullying, and text messages via computers, closely followed by email bullying; the least prevalent were in a newsgroup, text messaging via cell phone, bulletin board and e-mail.

The three most prevalent forms of bullying behaviour were being ignored by others, disrespscted by others and being called names by others, even though threatening behaviours, rumour spreading, being picked on and being made fun of were commonly prevalent forms in the victimisation group as well.

Hinduja and Patchin collected data online from 1,388 frequent internet users (18 hours/week average) between the ages of 6 and 17.

About 34% (males 32%, females 36%) had been cyberbullied; by media, these were chat room 24% computer text message 19%, e-mail 11%, bulletin board 8%, mobile phone text messaging 4%, newsgroup 1%.Burgess-Proctor, Patchin and Hinduja investigated cyberbullying amongst 3,141 adolescent girls (age 8-17, data collected online), 38% reported victimisation, with the most common media being chat rooms (26%), computer text messaging (22%) and e-mail (almost 14%).

Common types of behaviour included ‘name – calling’, e.g. ‘fat’, ‘ugly’, and spreading of gossip. When asked what kind of response to the bullying the victim took, almost 27% said they bullied the person back, 25% did nothing and 17% stayed offline.

A Cross-national study in 4 countries

2005, An International Synposium on Education Reform Report (NIER/MEXT, 2005) gives data from equivalent questionnaires for experiences of victimisation by computer/e-mail, over three six-monthly time points during 2004-2005.

Table 1 shows the findings (calculated from the original report) for primary and secondary age boys and girls, at three time points 6 months apart, and by two criteria (sometimes or more; and in brackets, once/week or more).

Samples were not strictly comparable, but rates do appear higher in Australia and expecially Canada, than in South Korea and Japan; although this is more marked for the lenient than the strict frequency criterion. The criterion also affects the age and gender differences found, which do also very by country.