lecture 9 cyberbullying

Cyberbullying & cybersafety

//6705 Enhanced

Learning in Professional

Contexts

Dr Megan [email protected]

5B66

Overview

•Bullying

•Cyberbullying

• Identifying and responding to cyberbullying

A word to the wise ...

•This lecture is presented in parts

•Take notes as we go because you might be asked to discuss things with a buddy during proceedings

•Write down things that interest, provoke, intice, challenge, confuse

•Feel free to interrupt with focused questions at any stage

Tweet this lecture:#6705elpc

PART I

IT’S ALL BULLYING ...

Traditional bullying

•Bullying is a form of abuse based on a power imbalance.

•Can involve hitting, spitting, teasing, ridicule, sarcasm, scapegoating

•May be a large number of people indirectly involved, e.g., witnesses and bystanders

Shariff, Shaheen. 2008. Cyber-bullying. Issues and solutions for the school, the classroom and the home. London: Routledge. p. 11)


•In school, usually occurs in areas with minimal adult supervision

•Teachers often look for physical injury and generally ignore verbal bullying (they turn a blind eye)

•Many teachers also believe that children should cope with teasing on their own

Shariff, Shaheen. 2008. Cyber-bullying. Issues and solutions for the school, the classroom and the home. London: Routledge. p. 10, 14, 15)


•Teachers’ perceptions of bullying determine how they respond to complaints

•Verbal bullying is often seen as ‘harmless’

•But ... cyberbullying is largely verbal

•Verbal bullying is harder for victims to substantiate

Shariff, Shaheen. 2008. Cyber-bullying. Issues and solutions for the school, the classroom and the home. London: Routledge. p. 15, 22)

What’s new, what’s the same?

•Discriminatory attitudes have always existed

•The internet makes them more visible

•The internet also makes teacher behaviour and school culture more visible, which schools and teachers may feel uncomfortable about ...

Shariff, Shaheen. 2008. Cyber-bullying. Issues and solutions for the school, the classroom and the home. London: Routledge. p. 10, 14, ch 5)

All bullying

•Power imbalance favours the perpetrator

•Perpetrators supported by a group of peers

•Targetted students draw negative attention of their peers

•Exclusion and isolation of victim fortifies the power of the perpetrator(s)


All bullying

•Perpetrators’ behaviour is uninvited and unwanted

•Perpetrators’ actions are deliberate, repeated, and often relentless


Who fits this profile?

All bullying

•The combination of power and exclusion is very potent

•Once a target is identified, they are presumed to ‘get what is coming to them’

Shariff, Shaheen. 2008. Cyber-bullying. Issues and solutions for the school, the classroom and the home. London: Routledge. p. 16, 18)

RolesROLE Per cent

Bullies 8.2

Victims 11.7

Assistants (join in) 19.5

Reinforcers (observe and laugh) 17.3

Defenders of victims 23.7

Outsiders (unaware or avoid situation altogether) 12.7


PART II

CYBERBULLYING

Cyberbullying: why it’s different

•Peer support for perpetrators in cyberspace can multiply to millions of onlookers

•Is mainly verbal and written (not physical)

•Can be saved, be reproduced and be permanent

•Does not stop at the front gateShariff, Shaheen. 2008. Cyber-bullying. Issues and solutions for the school, the classroom and the home. London: Routledge. p. 25, 32)

Cyberbullying: why it’s different

•No physical divider of authority, as there is in school (cyberspace’s boundaries are ill-defined)


Cyberbullying: Characteristics

•Anonymity (perpetrators shield their identities; victims in the playground wonder, ‘Is it him, is it her?’)

•Infinite audience (hundreds of perpetrators can get involved)

•Prevalent sexual and homophobic harrassment (may be related to differences in how the genders use the internet)

Shariff, Shaheen. 2008. Cyber-bullying. Issues and solutions for the school, the classroom and the home. London: Routledge. p. 33 - 34)

Cyberbullying: Characteristics

•Permanence (mobiles are carried all the time, therefore difficult to ignore; difficult to remove material posted by another person)

•Social networking tools are perfect for it as they are verbal and written (girls, especially, engage in this type of communication, hence the increase in female cyberbullying)

Shariff, Shaheen. 2008. Cyber-bullying. Issues and solutions for the school, the classroom and the home. London: Routledge. p. 25, 32, 40)

Gender and bullying

•Boys engage in more aggressive forms of bullying

•Girls engage in more covert and psychological forms

•Girls, especially, engage in this type of communication, hence the increase in female cyberbullying


Gender and bullying

•Girls will engage more in stalking, or tricking others into meeting them in isolated places so they can beat them up

•Both genders increase their violent behaviour between ages 9 to 15 or 19


Drivers of concern about ICT risks

•Generational digital divide

•Social context

•Research context

Byron, Tanya. 2008. Safer Children in a Digital World. The Report of the Byron Review. Available at http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/byronreview/ Direct download link http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/byronreview/pdfs/Final%20Report%20Bookmarked.pdf Accessed 22 February 2010. pp. 22-26.

Generational digital divide

•Most parents understand their children’s experiences in the context of their own memories (backyards, local hangouts)

•This is an additional form of the digital divide

•Parental response is based also on their own experience of technology


Experience of technology

Byron, Tanya. 2008. Safer Children in a Digital World. The Report of the Byron Review. Available at http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/byronreview/ Direct download link http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/byronreview/pdfs/Final%20Report%20Bookmarked.pdf Accessed 22 February 2010. p. 115.


•The difference between two mindsets can go a long way to explaining how the generations perceive the digital world


Two mindsetsMindset 1.0 Mindset 2.0

The world is appropriately interpreted, understood and responded to in broadly physical

industrial terms

The world cannot adequately be interpreted, understood and responded to in physical-

industrial terms only

Value is a function of scarcity Value is a function of dispersion

Products as material artifacts Products as enabling services

Tools for producing Tools for mediating and relating

Focus on individual intelligence Focus on collective intelligence

Expertise and authority ‘located’ in individuals and institutions

Expertise and authority are distributed and collective; hybrid experts

Space as enclosed and purpose specific Space as open, continuous and fluid

Social relations of ‘bookspace’; a stable ‘textual order’

Social relations of emerging ‘digital media space’; texts in change

Lankshear, Colin and Michele Knobel. 2006. Blogging as participation: the active sociality of a new literacy. http://www.geocities.com/c.lankshear/bloggingparticipation.pdf. Accessed 10 October 2007


•Adults use email, the internet and mobiles, but they do not rely on them as tools of social communication to the extent that young people do

•Many adults think of ICTs as a means to an end (the medium) -- for young people, ICTs are an integral part of the message


Age-related behaviours

Byron, Tanya. 2008. Safer Children in a Digital World. The Report of the Byron Review. Available at http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/byronreview/ Direct download link http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/byronreview/pdfs/Final%20Report%20Bookmarked.pdf Accessed 22 February 2010. p. 44

Anyone want to share or comment?

Risks

1.Content (sexual, commercial)

2.Contact and conduct (stranger danger, bullying, harmful sites, commercial contact, new issues of credibility, personal information)

Byron, Tanya. 2008. Safer Children in a Digital World. The Report of the Byron Review. Available at http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/byronreview/ Direct download link http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/byronreview/pdfs/Final%20Report%20Bookmarked.pdf Accessed 22 February 2010. pp. 49-59.

Content, contact and conduct

Byron, Tanya. 2008. Safer Children in a Digital World. The Report of the Byron Review. Available at http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/byronreview/ Direct download link http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/byronreview/pdfs/Final%20Report%20Bookmarked.pdf Accessed 22 February 2010. p. 16

Content risks: sexual content

•The Internet has increased children’s exposure to sexually explicit content

•Around half of children are not especially bothered by such material

•A minority (boys and older children) actively seek it out


Content risks: sexual content

•Sizeable minority do not like it and do not wish to see it

•Children report that they are distressed, disgusted, offended, bothered by such material

•Few children (16 %) tell their parents when they do encounter it


Content risks: commercial content

•The Internet has increased children’s exposure to commercial content

•Findings are mixed about how to interpret this


Content risks commercial content

•Evaluating online content is a crucial skill•Age is crucial to ability to judge information, therefore young people need guidance from adults as their brains develop

•But brain development research suggests that pre-adolescent children cannot interpret some material


Contact and conduct risks

•Contact: child is the receiver of the communication

•Conduct: child is the instigator of inappropriate behaviour


Contact: stranger danger

•‘Grooming’ practices

•A significant proportion of young people have been contacted by strangers online (31 % of 9-19 year olds)

•Increased awareness of risk does not necessarily curtail behaviour

Byron, Tanya. 2008. Safer Children in a Digital World. The Report of the Byron Review. Available at http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/byronreview/ Direct download link http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/byronreview/pdfs/Final%20Report%20Bookmarked.pdf Accessed 22 February 2010. p. 53-54.

Conduct: bullying

•Online bullying can be anonymous and potentially more damaging

•Offline bullying is still more prevalent than cyberbullying (but has the potential to increase)


Conduct: harmful sites

•Opportunities for marginalised groups to spread harmful, hateful information has increased but the effect of this is still unclear

•Pro-suicide/emo sites

•Hate sites

•Body image sites (anorexia, bulimia)Byron, Tanya. 2008. Safer Children in a Digital World. The Report of the Byron Review. Available at http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/byronreview/ Direct download link http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/byronreview/pdfs/Final%20Report%20Bookmarked.pdf Accessed 22 February 2010. p. 56.

Contact: Commercial contact

•Potential for targetting children with exploitative information

•Children concerned by pop-up adverts

•Evidence that children perceive it as an invasion of privacy

•Evidence that children are concerned that private info is being passed to advertisers


Contact: Personal information

•Young people are posting information online and do not necessarily understand the short- or long-term implications

•Half of children (46 %) have given out personal information to someone they have met online


Contact: Personal information

•It is easy to publish personal information online

•Potential for misuse if young people post intimate information (photos, addresses, phone numbers, places they visit) to casual acquaintances


ANY QUESTIONS SO FAR?

PART III

IDENTIFYING AND RESPONDING TO CYBERBULLYING

You should be able to advise about

•Dangerous websites

•Social sites

•YouTube

•Happy slapping

•Internet abuse

•Internet scams

•MySpace bullying

•Facebook bullying

•Mobile phone bullying

•Bebo bullying

•Sexting

•Twitter safety

Bullying UK. http://www.bullying.co.uk/ Accessed 22 February 2010

Basic cyberbullying advice

•Do not respond and do not engage

•Identify the person responsible

•Keep all abusive communications

•Try to block contact from the bully

•Tell an adult and tell the school

As a teacher, you should

•Educate students and staff about cyberbullying

•Monitor students’ internet behaviour

•Talk regularly to students about their online activities

•Investigate reports of cyberbullying immediately

LifeSkills4Kids.com. 2009. How to Spot and Stop Cyber Bullying. http://lifeskills4kids.com/kb/2009/03/cyber-bullying/ Accessed 22 February 2010.


•Talk regularly with students about bullying and cyberbullying

•Explain that all bullying is unacceptable and give reasons

•Outline your expectations for responsible online behaviour and make the consequences for poor behaviour clear



•Remind students that many acts of bullying are criminal offences for which there can be legal consequences (e.g., threats, extortion, harassment, discrimination)


Contact the police if

•Threats of violence are made

•There is evidence of extortion

•The communications involve obsenities, harrassment, stalking, hate crimes

•There is child pornography


You should be able to spot bullies

•We always talk about the victims, but what about the perpetrators?

•Talk about bullying behaviours in class

•Note that parents are more likely to say, “My child is being bullied” than to say, “My child is a bully”

Bullying UK. http://www.bullying.co.uk/ Accessed 22 February 2010

http://www.bullying.co.uk/

Wrapping up ...

•All bullying is about power imbalances

•Cyberbullying is different from traditional bullying because the audience in cyberspace can multiply to millions of onlookers

•Can be saved, be reproduced and be permanent

•Does not stop at the front gate

Wrapping up ...

•Parental and teacher attitudes to internet risk and safety is shaped by experience of technology

•We should not start from the belief that the internet is not inherently a risky place

•Instead, we should make an effort to understand and control the risks -- as with anything else in life

Wrapping up ...

•Advice for young people whendealing with a bully is:

‣Do not engage

‣Keep all communications

‣Try to identify the bully

‣Try to block contact

‣Tell someone

Image referencesCyberfamily http://deangroom.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/540537110_bee0943d61_b.jpg

John George Brown http://lawyersusaonline.com/benchmarks/files/2009/12/john_george_brown_the_bully_of_the_neighborhood6.jpg

Bully game http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/image/article/855/855791/bully-scholarship-edition-20080228041255164.jpg

Nelson http://www.simpsonstrivia.com.ar/simpsons-photos/wallpapers/nelson-muntz.gif

Eye of Sauron http://martianchronicles.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/the-eye-of-sauron.jpg

Four ways http://media.photobucket.com/image/cyberbully/rustyny/cyberbully.png?o=1

All other images are royalty- and copyright-free. yay!

lecture 9 cyberbullying

Education