Teachers' Perception of the Phenomenon of Cyberbullying During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Cyberbullying is a negative social phenomenon that takes place online. It consists of harassing technology users through various means and various platforms. Frequent exposure to this phenomenon can cause emotional, mental and social problems for victims, witnesses and aggressors. In the current pandemic context, when education has shifted to the online environment, and students spend a significant amount of time using different devices and online platforms, the number of cyberbullying cases is constantly increasing. There is currently little research describing how this phenomenon influenced online aggression. In preventing and eliminating this phenomenon, teachers play an important role, due to the time they spend with students and the impact they can have on them. In order to identify teachers' perceptions of this phenomenon during the pandemic and how they manage it in the classroom, we conducted a qualitative research on 10 teachers from primary and secondary schools. The results of the research were interesting and offered a new perspective on this phenomenon during Covid-19 crisis.

Metaphors, powerlessness and online aggression

A lockdown was imposed in Wuhan, China, the alleged epicentre of the COVID-19 outbreak, on 23 January 2020. Rattled by the short notice and severity of the restrictions, many grabbed the last opportunity to escape, an act widely criticised on Weibo, China’s popular microblogging site. This study aims to examine the unsavoury discourse deployed by Weibo users to express impoliteness and discursively construct negative identities of the lockdown escapees. Posts on Weibo criticising, reporting and threatening the escapees were analysed, revealing that the escapees were dehumanised through vivid animal metaphors to highlight their irresponsibility and call for their punishment. Animal metaphors can co-occur with various impoliteness triggers to intensify offensiveness, heightening the hostility of interlocutors towards a target. This use of metaphors also showcases online users’ anger, distrust, and hatred towards the escapees, their solidarity-seeking behaviour online and their irrationality.

Digital citizenship among Appalachian middle schoolers: The common sense digital citizenship curriculum

Background: Nearly 60% of teenagers in the USA have experienced abusive online behaviour. Identifying effective programmes to address these behaviours and promote digital citizenship is a research priority to reduce the rate of occurrence and consequential harmful effects of abusive online behaviour. Purpose: To evaluate the effectiveness of a Digital Citizenship Curriculum in increasing knowledge of digital citizenship and reducing cyberbullying and online aggression among middle-schoolers in an underserved community using a free curriculum. Method: Middle-schoolers participated in pilot implementation of a Digital Citizenship Curriculum (DCC) to evaluate its effectiveness in increasing knowledge of digital citizenship and reducing cyberbullying and online aggression. Follow up interviews were conducted to explore participants’ perceptions of the curriculum. Results: Participants demonstrated a statistically significant increase in their knowledge of digital citizenship with an increase of 2.96 in the mean score ( p < .001). Paired t-tests by gender demonstrated a significant difference in pre-post assessment mean scores for girls ( p < .001). Post-intervention perceptions indicate the curriculum was positively received and informative. Conclusion: Identifying cost-effective and resource-friendly programmes that support social-emotional learning and promote digital citizenship is crucial for underserved populations. Regions such as Appalachian Ohio often lack the resources to fund costly curriculum aimed at online aggression prevention. This study supports the implementation of the DCC and indicates the need for future research on the long-term effects of the curriculum on middle school participants.

Digital Accessibility and Intersectional Discrimination

Intersectional discrimination recognizes social disadvantages occurring at the nexus of multiple social identities. An intersectional perspective provides a powerful lens for examining states’ obligations to ensure access to information and communications technology (ICT) across disability, gender, and socioeconomic status. Intersectional barriers can include accessibility, cost and affordability, social exclusion and online aggression, and learning digital skills. Our findings have particular relevance for the Global South due to the close link between poverty and disability, growing general prevalence of poverty, and increasing income disparities between the Global South and Global North (Hickel, 2017; Moyo & Ferguson, 2009). Our findings also illustrate the complex relationships and the need for new policies and programs that take into account intersectionality when adopting ICT as a tool for sustainable development.

Psychosomatic Symptoms and Neuroticism following COVID-19: The Role of Online Aggression toward a Stigmatized Group

The present study investigated the effect of interpersonal mistreatment on the perpetrators’ mental health. We proposed that the threat of COVID-19 will increase people’s mental health problems through their on-line aggression toward stigmatized groups accused of spreading the disease and that there might be potential gender differences in such effects. We tested our predictions among a sample of U.S. residents (Study 1) and a large sample of Chinese residents living out of Hubei province (Study 2) during a heightened period of concern about COVID-19, February 2020. Specifically, we measured U.S. residents’ on-line aggressive behaviors toward Chinese people (Study 1) and Chinese non-Hubei residents’ on-line aggressive behaviors toward Hubei residents (Study 2) as well as their neuroticism (Study 1) and mental health states (Study 2). In line with our predictions, both studies showed that perceived infection of COVID-19 can induce on-line aggression toward stigmatized groups, thereby increasing people’s mental health problems. Moreover, the relationship between COVID-19 vulnerability, on-line aggression, and psychosomatic symptoms was more prominent in men than in women. These results offer insights into people’s responses toward COVID-19 and add to the understanding of people’s mental and physical health during the epidemic stage of contagious diseases.

Exploring European childrenʼs self-reported data on online aggression

To address the topic of children’s online aggression, this article explores a subsample from the EU Kids Online dataset (2017–2019) of 1404 children, aged 9–16, who reported having engaged in aggressive acts online in the previous year. Through a cluster analysis, respondents were classified into three groups. Findings emphasize the risk factors for aggression and how they relate to age-specific developmental tasks. Boys predominate, but the gender gap is not as wide as in offline contexts. For almost half of the children, aggression goes hand in hand with victimization. All the clusters share high levels of emotional deprivation. A sense of lacking social support, from both adults and peers, becomes more relevant among those children with high and more problematic engagement in online aggression. Results confirm that online aggression must be considered within the complex and fluid offline–online continuum cutting across the social contexts in which children grow.

Trolls Without Borders: A Cross-Cultural Examination of Victim Reactions to Verbal and Silent Aggression Online

Trolling—the online exploitation of website, chat, or game mechanics at another user's expense—can and does take place all over cyberspace. It can take myriad forms, as well—some verbal, like trash-talking an opponent in a game, and some silent, like refusing to include a new player in a team effort during an in-game quest. However, despite this variety, there are few to no studies comparing the effects of these differing trolling types on victims. In addition, no study has yet taken into account users' offline cultural context and norms into the trolling victim experience. To fill this gap in the literature, the present study put participants from three culturally-distinct countries—Pakistan, Taiwan, and the Netherlands—in a simulated trolling interaction using the Cyberball game. Participants were either flamed (read: harshly insulted) or ostracized by a member of their own cultural group (ingroup) or a minority member (outgroup), and the participants' emotional responses, behavioral intentions toward the other players, and messages sent during the game were taken as indicators of their response to the trolling. Results showed that our Taiwanese sample used the most reactive aggression when trolled and our Dutch sample was the most passive. In addition, ostracism generally produced the desire to repair relationships, irrespective of cultural context, and perpetrator culture (ingroup or outgroup) only produced an effect in the behavioral intentions of our Pakistani sample. Overall, it would appear that online and offline culture interact to produce the variety of responses to trolling seen in extant literature. Additional implications for future research into computer-mediated communication and online aggression are also discussed.

Effects of Cybervictimization on the Mental Health of Primary School Students

Although many studies have addressed the consequences of cyberbullying on mental health in secondary school, there is a lack of research in primary education. Moreover, most students who are cybervictims also suffer from traditional bullying, and studies on cyberbullying do not always control for the effects of the latter. The aim of our study is therefore to address the possible effects of cyberbullying on different aspects of the life and behavior of students in Years 3 to 6 of primary school. The sample consisted of 636 students attending 38 schools, as well as their parents. Children responded to a bullying and a cyberbullying questionnaire (the EBIPQ and ECIPQ, respectively), and their parents responded to three questionnaires: the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), a sociodemographic questionnaire, and one on children's experiences related to bullying and cyberbullying. The results reveal that 14.4% of the children, mostly boys, had suffered at least one online aggression in the previous 2 months. Most of them were also victims of traditional bullying. In this latter group, no differences were found between the SDQ scores reported by cybervictims and those reported by non-cybervictims. In contrast, those cybervictims who were not victims of traditional bullying displayed more difficulties in relation to Conduct problems, Externalizing problems, Home-life impact, and Total difficulties on the SDQ scales. Our results show that cyberbullying affects children's lives as early as primary school, and especially boys, even in children who do not suffer from traditional bullying.

Cyber-Aggression Typology Questionnaire: Structure and Primary Psychometric Characteristics

The problem of online aggression has attracted increasing attention over the past decade. Various studies revealed a need for tools that would identify the causes of aggressive behavior in cyberspace. The article presents the results of the adaptation of the English-language Cyber-Aggression Typology Questionnaire (CATQ) by K. C. Runions on 421 Russian-speaking teenagers aged 10–15 years (St. Petersburg). The method features four types of online aggression. K. C. Runions describes the cyber-aggression in teenagers through their motivational goals and the ability to behavioral self-control. The procedures of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the four-factor model of the original questionnaire. All factors were balanced by the number of statements. The final version of the questionnaire included 23 statements. The structure of the questionnaire was represented by the following factors: impulsive-aversive cyber-aggression, controlled-aversive cyberaggression, controlled-appetitive cyber-aggression, and impulsive-appetitive cyber-aggression. The questionnaire showed good indicators of discriminativeness and reliability; it can serve as a reliable psychological diagnosis tool for studying the phenomenon of cyber-aggression in scientific and practical purposes. Understanding the motivations behind cyber-aggressive behavior can help to develop new preventive measures based on individual differences in the disadaptive factors of online aggression.

Community Programs

The United States has a federal system. One advantage of a federal system is that it can encourage competition among the states resulting in the testing of new policy solutions and the diffusion of best practices. This holds true for online aggression policy, particularly those addressing cyberbullying. This chapter begins with a discussion of the literature on strategies being adopted at the school board level to limit the spread of cyberbullying. It concludes with an overview of current evaluation research comparing recent policies being implemented by local schools.