International Perspectives on Cyberbullying

333 Pages·2018·3.811 MB·English

by  Anna Costanza Baldry, Catherine Blaya, David P. Farrington

INTERNATIONAL
PERSPECTIVES ON
CYBERBULLYING
PREVALENCE, RISK FACTORS AND INTERVENTIONS
EDITED BY ANNA COSTANZA BALDRY,
CATHERINE BLAYA AND DAVID P. FARRINGTON
Palgrave Studies in Cybercrime and Cybersecurity
Series Editors
Marie-Helen Maras
John Jay College of Criminal Justice CUN
New York, NY, USA
Thomas J. Holt
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI, USA
This book series addresses the urgent need to advance knowledge in the
fields of cybercrime and cybersecurity. Because the exponential expansion
of computer technologies and use of the Internet have greatly increased
the access by criminals to people, institutions, and businesses around the
globe, the series will be international in scope. It provides a home for
cutting-edge long-form research. Further, the series seeks to spur conver-
sation about how traditional criminological theories apply to the online
environment. The series welcomes contributions from early career
researchers as well as established scholars on a range of topics in the
cybercrime and cybersecurity fields.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14637
Anna Costanza Baldry
Catherine Blaya
David P. Farrington
Editors
International
Perspectives on
Cyberbullying
Prevalence, Risk Factors and
Interventions
Editors
Anna Costanza Baldry Catherine Blaya
Department of Psychology UER Pédagogie Spécialisée
Università degli Studi della Campania HEP du Canton de Vaud
Luigi Vanvitelli Lausanne, Switzerland
Caserta, Italy
David P. Farrington
Institute of Criminology
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, UK
Palgrave Studies in Cybercrime and Cybersecurity
ISBN 978-3-319-73262-6 ISBN 978-3-319-73263-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73263-3
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v
Foreword
Cyberbullying, together with other kinds of risks on social media and the
internet, is an emergent problem of this century. Even if the phenome-
non itself was reported in the 1990s (sometimes called by other names
such as ‘electronic aggression’), public awareness of the issue, and research
on the topic, only really emerged in the early 2000s. Surveys of publica-
tions on cyberbullying (Zych et al. 2015; Smith and Berkkun 2017)
demonstrate an exponential increase over the last 15 years. Smith and
Berkkun (2017), analyzing Web of Science publications from 2000 to
2015, found an average number of 33.6 articles per year; but this built up
from a very slow start during the first 7 years of this century, then increased
rapidly: from 2000 to 2006, a small trickle of articles (range 0 to 5 per
year); from 2007 to 2011, a substantial but still modest number of arti-
cles (range 14 to 38 per year); but from 2012 on, a very large number of
articles (range 85 to 131 per year). The year 2015 saw 131 articles, or
about 2.5 new articles every week. Most articles (454 in all) reported
empirical data, with 30 of these (9%) providing information on resources
and interventions.
Although a life-span phenomenon, most of the research and attention
on cyberbullying has been on children and young people, where it appears
most prevalent. We know that involvement in cyberbullying, notably as
a victim but also as a bystander or perpetrator, has negative consequences
for all those involved, and also for the school climate (Kowalski et al.
vii
viii Foreword
2014; Astor and Benbenishty in press; and many chapters in this book).
So what has the increased public awareness and the increased research
effort achieved? There are certainly now more resources for young people,
teachers and parents, mainly on websites or in the form of leaflets and
advice packs. Are these helping to reduce the problem?
Some media hype about an increasing epidemic of cyberbullying is
overstated. Obviously, the prevalence of cyberbullying has increased in
this century, as penetration of the internet has increased, and smart-
phones became readily available from 2007. However, the evidence
about changes in prevalence from recent years is mixed (see also
Chap. 3). A partial follow-up of the EU Kids Online study, which
assessed cyberbullying rates in 25 European countries in 2010, was
reported by Mascheroni and Cuman (2014). In all seven countries in
the follow-up, cyber victimization rates were somewhat higher in 2013
than in 2010, the average increasing from 9% to 12%. In contrast, a
10-year longitudinal study in 109 schools in Maryland, USA, found
some increase in cyber victimization scores from 2005/06 to 2009/10
(from around 6% to 8%) but then a decline to 2013/14 (to around
5%) (Waasdorp et al. 2017).
While much has been done to understand and prevent cyberbullying,
much more remains to be done. This book makes a significant contribu-
tion to such ongoing efforts. The Tabby online project described in
Chap. 2 (and with findings reported in another six chapters), plus the
reviews of the situation in Canada, the USA, and the UK and Ireland, are
valuable resources in this endeavor. Cyberbullying is obviously an inter-
national problem and, despite national and cultural differences, there is
much that we can learn from knowledge and experiences gained in differ-
ent countries. Similar endeavors are also underway in drawing evidence
on cyberbullying (as well as offline bullying) in Eastern countries such as
Japan, South Korea, Mainland China and Hong Kong (Smith et al.
2016), and India and Australia (Smith et al. 2018). Especially useful in
this book are the practical conclusions and policy recommendations in
Chap. 12. Although unfortunately there is no one silver bullet to stop
cyberbullying, the 10 silver bullet recommendations in this final chapter
are succinct and sensible. They deserve to be widely discussed and imple-
Forewor d ix
mented. The editors are to be congratulated in bringing together this
valuable collection and in drawing out such important policy recommen-
dations for the future.
Goldsmiths, University of London Peter K. Smith
London, UK
References
Astor, R. A., & Benbenishty, R. (in press). Bullying, school violence, and climate
in evolving contexts: Culture, organization, and time. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Kowalski, R. M., Giumetti, G. W., Schroeder, A. N., & Lattanner, M. R. (2014).
Bullying in the digital age: A critical review and meta-analysis of cyberbully-
ing research among youth. Psychological Bulletin, 140(4), 1073–1137. https://
doi.org/10.1037/a0035618.
Mascheroni, G., & Cuman, A. (2014). Net Children Go Mobile: Final report
(with country fact sheets). Deliverables D6.4 and D5.2. Milano: Educatt.
Retrieved from netchildrengomobile.eu/ncgm/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/
NCGM_FinalReport_Country_DEF.pdf
Smith, P. K., & Berkkun, F. (2017). How research on cyberbullying has devel-
oped. In C. McGuckin & L. Corcoran (Eds.), Bullying and cyberbullying:
Prevalence, psychological impacts and intervention strategies (pp.  11–27).
Hauppauge: Nova Science.
Smith, P. K., Kwak, K., & Toda, Y. (Eds.). (2016). School bullying in different
cultures: Eastern and western perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Smith, P. K., Sundaram, S., Spears, B., Blaya, C., Schafer, M., & Sandhu, D.
(Eds.). (2018). Bullying, cyberbullying and pupil well-being in schools:
Comparing European, Australian and Indian perspectives. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Waasdorp, T. E., Pas, E. T., Zablotsky, B., & Bradshaw, C. P. (2017). Ten-year
trends in bullying and related attitudes among 4th-to 12th-g raders. Pediatrics,
139(6), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2016-2615.
Zych, I., Ortega-Ruiz, R., & del Rey, R. (2015). Scientific research on bullying
and cyberbullying: Where have we been and where are we going. Aggression and
Violent Behavior, 24, 188–198. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2015.05.015
Preface
We have written and edited this book to share our knowledge and experience
on the topic of cyberbullying and cybervictimization in 10 different coun-
tries. We present some results from an innovative project and program
addressing threat assessment as a new approach to early intervention to make
students aware of the risks they run online either as victims, bullies, or both.
The threat assessment approach is based on the extensive knowledge in
the criminology and social sciences fields on risk assessment. The assess-
ment of the severity of threats and what they may lead to is based on risk
assessment principles. To prevent future antisocial actions, it is important
to identify static (stable) and dynamic (changeable) risk factors to estab-
lish the role they play in cyberbullying. It is also relevant to develop tai-
lored intervention programs that target some of the risk factors and aim
to strengthen the protective factors.
During the over five years of implementation of the TABBY (Threat
Assessment of Bullying Behaviour among Youngsters) project, we have worked
with thousands of children of many countries, cultures, languages, and
ages. They all gave us joy in what we are doing: on one hand to make them
more able to understand that going online and saying stupid things about
a schoolmate does not mean that you are a bad person but that you need
to understand about one’s own and others’ feelings, roles of social skills,
social norms or group pressure. On the other to help those who suffer
from cyberbullying to acknowledge they have no responsibility nor fault.
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