Cyber
bullying has become more and more of a problem in the 21st century
with the age of technology. In today’s society, most people from business
executives to middle school students have smart phones or some sort of means to
access the internet. Our world is digitally connected; which can be a blessing
and a curse. When internet users abuse the privileges technology offers, cyber
bullying can occur. Middle school students are a growing concern because of
their quick accessibility to access modern technologies and their maturity
level to appropriately use these different mediums. Christopher B. Davidson and
Carl Stein found in their study, The Dangers of Cyber bullying, that 68% of
middle school students have unlimited access to the internet while at school.
This includes school devices such as desktop computers, lab tops and also the
students’ personal devices such as smart phones and Ipads. Additionally,
Davidson and Stein found that the average 13/14 year old spends 17 hours a week
on the internet, and in extreme cases, as much as 40 hours per week. With the
increasing use of the internet, cyber bullying has become a growing problem.
According to The Dangers of Cyber bullying, “nearly 75% of middle school ages
students have experienced cyber bullying aggression at least once in the past
year” (Davidson, Stein). The age 12-14 is a very vulnerable time in adolescent
life. Maturity level is low and the world around them can shape who they will
become. “Adolescence is one of the most critical stages in the development of
emotional and cognitive schemes and will shape and evolve the adult
personality” (Davidson, Stein). If an adolescent is cyber bullied the effects
he or she experienced will most likely still impact them through adulthood.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Defining
cyber bullying has been a complicated process. If you look up the definition of
cyber bullying on twelve different websites, you are going to find twelve
different interpretations. However,
there are some words used in every definition such as ‘repeated’ ‘willful’
‘harm’ and ‘electronic devices’. The breakdown of these words and what they
mean to cyber bullying provides society with the simplest form of cyber
bullying. The word ‘repeated’ in relation to cyber bullying means that bullying
shows a pattern of behavior, not just one isolated incident. Saying that cyber
bullying is willful means that the perpetrator had some level of intent behind
the attacks. Cyber bullying is deliberate, not accidental. The word ‘harm’ in a
cyber-bullying definition means that the target of the attack experienced some
kind of painful side effect. An electronic device is the medium in which cyber
bullying occurs and differentiates cyber bullying from traditional bullying
(The Cyber Bullying Research Center).
There
are many disturbing and painful side effects that victims of cyber bullying
experience. These side effects include drug, alcohol and substance abuse,
depression, self-esteem issues, identity crisis’, and in some extreme cases,
suicide. For the purpose of my research I am focusing on how depression and low
self-esteem issues can cause identity problems which can follow youth into
adulthood, and in some cases youth lose their battle with these side effects
and commit suicide. According to Jemica M. Carter and Feleta L. Wilson and the
medical journal, Cyber bullying: A 21st Century Health Care Phenomenon,
“Cyber Bullying is receiving more public attention due to the harm caused to
victims that can result in anxiety and depression, somatic illness, retaliatory
violence, and suicide.” Cyber bullying has increasingly become a problem in our
society; however the side effects are extensive. Students who have been cyber
bullied have a higher instance of depression and are 3 times more likely to
attempt suicide (Davidson, Stein). The journal, Cyber bullying: Identification,
Prevention, and Response, by Dr. Justin W. Patchin, suggests that “Self-esteem
issues, depression, and even suicide are some of the many detrimental outcomes
associated with cyber bullying that have reached into the real world.” These outcomes of cyber bullying are
affecting our community and causing extreme distress in our youth.
Unfortunately, because adolescence is such a vulnerable time period for growth,
youth who experience cyber bullying often carry these side effects with them
into adulthood if suicide is not committed.
One of the biggest side effects of cyber
bullying is depression. The American Depression Support Center defines
depression as “an illness that involves the body, mood, and thoughts and that
affects the way a person lives day to day life.” Depression makes daily
activities extremely hard to do or even enjoy. The physical effects of chronic
depression are appetite problems such as weight gain and weight loss, sleep
irregularities like insomnia and fatigue, persistent headaches, and chronic
body pains. The mental effects of chronic depression are loss of emotional
responses which leads to complete numbness called the flat effect; on the other
end of the spectrum there are extreme feelings such as hopelessness,
worthlessness, and social disconnect. Both physical and mental effects of
depression have been linked to suicide. In the study, Protective Factors
against Depression and Suicidal Behavior in Adolescences, Dr. David Cohen
studies depression in youth using a vulnerability-resilience stress model based
on principles of developmental psychopathology. Dr. Cohen argues that
depression in adolescences “results from failure of individual adaptive
mechanisms (high vulnerability and low resilience) to respond to outside
stresses and circumstances.” In other words depression in adolescences comes
from not having a self-identity which causes high vulnerability and low
resilience, which then causes the failure to respond to outside factors. Dr. Cohen’s study also shows that adolescents
who experience depressive episodes are 75% more likely to struggle with
depression into adulthood (an average of 11 years). For example, if a middle
school student is cyber bullied at the age of 13 and consequently suffers from
depression, there is a 75% chance that the student will be suffering with that
depression until he or she is 24 years old. Dr. Cohen also concludes in his
study that “Individual detriments, such as depression, have the highest degree
association to suicidal behavior.” A
clear connection between depression, identity and suicide can be seen in just
one study. Using Dr. Cohen’s vulnerability-resilience model, we can see
depression stems from an individual’s lack of cognitive abilities such as
identity, and resilience. This makes an adolescent individually vulnerable which
makes them vulnerable to outside stresses. We know from Davidson and Stein in
The Dangers of Cyber bullying that adolescence is one of the most critical
stages in the development of emotional and cognitive schemes and will shape and
evolve the adult personality. And now with Dr. Cohen’s research we understand
that depression can be a lifelong battle if it is triggered as an adolescent.
Dr. Cohen was also able to find a correlation to depression and suicide.
Depression, identity, and suicide are serious consequences of cyberbullying in
adolescences; however because adolescences are so vulnerable, these issues can
shape who they become as an adult and still affect them throughout their
life.
Another
painful and very real side effect of cyber bullying is a low self-esteem. Low self-esteem is a thinking disorder in
which an individual views him as inadequate, unlovable, and/or incompetent.
Once formed, this negative view permeates every thought, producing faulty
assumptions and ongoing self-defeating behavior (The Self Esteem Institute). A
low self-esteem can cause other problems such as trust issues, distorted
self-statements, overly critical judgements about others, addictive behaviors,
and over reacting to different situations. Therefore self-esteem can have a
profound influence on a person's cognitions, emotions, and responses to
stressful life events. Having a healthy self-esteem is crucial for carrying out
daily activities and functioning in the real world. Once a low self-esteem is
formed in a person at a young age, it is very hard to overcome a certain image
of yourself. Both suicidal ideation and suicide attempts are related to
persistent negative views of the self (The Institute of Self Esteem). James C.
Overholser conducted a study for the Journal of the American Academy of Child
and Adolescent Psychiatry called ‘Self Esteem Deficits and Suicidal Tendencies
among Adolescents. In this study Overhosler found that “negative
self-evaluations were associated with increased suicidal tendencies, number of
suicidal gestures, seriousness of suicidal intent, and medical lethality of the
attempt in a study of 64 adolescent psychiatric inpatients. Thus, self-esteem
deficits appear to be directly related to suicidal tendencies, including both
suicidal ideation and suicide attempts in adolescents.” Regarding cyberbullying
and self-esteem, Dr. Justin W. Patchin consistently found that victims of
cyberbullying tend to have a lower self-esteem that non victims. In the middle
school where Dr. Patchin conducted his research, his sample showed that 30% of
the students at the school had been cyber bullied and 2 out of 3 victims had
significantly lower self-esteem. He also found that victims of cyberbullying
are three times more likely to attempt suicide. Self-esteem also plays a big
role into identity and social acceptance. “Adolescences is a time when identity
development is particularly important. During this time period, the process of
identity formation is largely dependent upon cues from the social environment,
for example societal stereotypes” (Patchin). Because adolescents are so
vulnerable to outside perspectives, creating a positive self-image can be a
challenge. Dr. Patchin considers “self-esteem to be an internal representation
of social acceptance and rejection and a psychological gauge monitoring the
degree to which a person is included verses excluded by others.” Self-esteem is
internal feelings based on experiences from the outside world. For example if a
middle school student is cyber bullied by his peers at school, the student’s
self-esteem level can be decreased based on the social rejection of the cyberbullying
and the image the student has about himself after being rejected. A sense of
belonging in society plays an important role in the cognitive progression in
adolescents and developing a healthy self-esteem. Because Dr. Patchin found a
correlation between cyberbullying and suicide, I used Thomas Joiner’s Model of
Suicide Risk to evaluate how social rejection can relate to a perceived risk of
suicide. The model shows that a perceived level of burdensomeness and a
thwarted sense of belongings, and an acquired capacity for suicide creates a
high risk for suicide completion or serious attempt. In other words, if a
cyberbullying victim feels like a burden and does not know where they belong in
their community, and they have the means to attempt, there is a serious risk
for suicidal tendencies. Again, social acceptance and rejection plays a role in
emotional capacity.
As
seen through Dr. Patchin’s article, Cyberbullying
and Self-esteem, identity is a key component to healthy levels of
self-esteem and being accepted in society. Erik Erikson described identity as
“a fundamental organizing principle, developing constantly throughout life and
providing a sense of continuity within the self and in interactions with
others.” A social practice theorist, Pierre Bourdieu, puts forth an embodied
experience theory regarding identity. Bourdieu argues that “Social practice
takes place in a culture field where identity and culture are engaged in
constant interaction” (Bollinger). This social structure implies that we are
connected to the people closest to us and “their beliefs and choices have a
pull on our beliefs and choices” (Bollinger). In some sense, our friends,
family and the rest of the people we interact with play a role into our
personal identities. For adolescences, the outside world has an extremely heavy
impact on shaping identity, mainly because teenagers feel the constant need to
fit in and be accepted in society. In the article, Systems Theory and the Development of Identity, Amy Wilson argues
that “the demand for inclusion implied a need for social acceptance which
relayed into the acceptance of self.” In other words, for adolescences to
accept themselves and their own identity, they must feel accepted by their
peers and society. Dr. Elizabeth Grosz analyses this more in depth in her
theory of Volatility of Embodiment. “Grosz considers a series of contemporary
philosophical views of the body which she separates into two distinct threads:
those that take the body as an exterior expression of interior dynamics; and
those that address the body as an inscribable surface, on which exterior forces
etch the values and truths of the dominant paradigm.” (Rethinking Rape 78). Therefore,
if an individual is cyberbullied, that person is alienated from the community
and because we are influenced most by the people around us, that person may
identify themselves with the labels the cyberbully gave them. We know that adolescences are highly
vulnerable at this stage in their lives, and a cyberbully labeling a young
person before they have the chance to figure out who they are themselves, can
be a very confusing and painful process. The
Assessment of Identity Development and Identity Diffusion in Adolescence by
Kristin Goth states “A stable identity plays a role in self-esteem, a realistic
appraisal of self and others, and insight into the effect one has on another.
Therefore identity aids in self-reflective functioning, autonomy, effective
social changes, and provides predictability and continuity of functioning
within a person, across situations and across time.” Based on Goth’s findings,
identity plays a huge role in every aspect of a person’s life. Identity also plays
a role in building a healthy self-esteem and engaging in functional social
practices. Cyberbullying has the ability to confuse one’s identity, jeopardize
a healthy self-esteem, and alienate someone from their community.
METHOD
Social
media offers a lot of positives and negatives to our society. Although the
positives can be extremely beneficial, the negatives can be detrimental. One of
these negatives is cyberbullying. I have previously used an ethnographic
approach to study how cyberbullying effects an individual and then how those
effects play out for the individual’s involvement in the community. The way the
cyberbullying victim perceives the attacks is crucial in the first step of the
social disconnect and eventual community withdraw. Once the victim starts
fearing and not trusting the community after the community has impacted their
daily performances, emotional capacities, and loss of perceived identities,
alienation and a withdraw from the community soon follow. With the withdraw, an
extreme social disconnect occurs in the community, creating a cyberbullying
plague.I used the important components of ethnographic interviewing such as
building rapport, tone setting, and active listening to conduct effective
interviews with cyberbullying victims. I wanted to understand what depression,
self-esteem, and suicide issues looked like for cyberbullying victims. I was
able to paint a thick and vivid picture of how these issues effected an
individual and their relationship with their community. Now I want to know how
a community feels and responds to cyberbullying. I plan on doing this in two
parts.
The
first part of my plan is to monitor Twitter for tweets of cyberbullying. I
chose Twitter as the social media site to analyze because from my previous
research, Twitter was involved in most of my cyberbullying cases. Also, Twitter
has been one of the more popular social media venues. I want to find examples
of cyberbullying in different forms such as slut shaming, body shaming, gay bashing,
attacks on people in positions of power, and other hateful speech. I am
assuming I am going to need about twenty tweets in each category to be able to
have enough to analyze. I am also assuming that once I start scoping Twitter
for examples of cyberbullying, I am going to find other forms of cyberbullying
to include as well. I want to see if different kinds of cyberbullying will
elicit different responses, or if the kinds of cyberbullying really make a
difference in the perceptions of cyberbullying to a community.
After I collect
this data, I am going to bring ethnography back into this project for the
second part of my plan. I am going to organize a focus group of Texas Lutheran
University students and show them the tweets. During this time, I am going to
be looking for their general responses, feelings, and opinions about
cyberbullying. I want to know which kinds of cyberbullying triggers more
emotion and which ones don’t. After I gather their general responses to
cyberbullying, I am going to show them transcripts of these forms of
cyberbullying that took place here in their community. I want to know their
responses, feelings, and opinions when they are confronted with the effects
cyberbullying in their community. Did they know that these cyberbullying
attacks were taking place in their community? If they were, how did they react?
Were they bystanders, or did they respond to the attacks? Were they aware of
the harmful side effects? How do these attacks in their community affect them
directly if at all? I am trying to find
out if members of a specific community are effected by cyberbullying when they
are not the victims.
Once I get the
responses from my focus group, I am going to go back to my original data and
put together a bigger picture of how cyberbullying works in a community. Hopefully
from this bigger picture, I can understand cyberbullying in more detail. If I
can understand how cyberbullying works from all angles, then many one day I can
influence the way we respond to cyberbullying culture.
ANALYSIS
My focus group consisted of seven current students at
Texas Lutheran University. These students ranged in age from freshmen to
seniors. There were four girls, three boys and I tried to get a diverse group
of race, major and political affiliation. I wanted a diverse group of students
because I wanted my data to be well rounded and I was looking for different
points of view regarding cyberbullying.
I started the focus group
by showing different kinds of cyberbullying through tweets. These tweets were
random ones I found that have nothing to do with these students or the TLU
community. They are just random tweets of cyberbullying. I put the tweets on
the screen and watched their reactions and without any prompting, I asked them
questions about the tweets to get the conversation going.
The first set of tweets I
showed the group were examples of slut shaming. These tweets were about a
sexual assault case that made major headlines.
Megan:
What are your thoughts on these tweets?
Female
1: I think these are horrible. That poor women already went through enough
being raped, and now she has to deal with the rest of the world knowing about
it and judging her.
Female
2: These are contributing to rape culture.
Male
1: I just think it’s sad. Do any of these people even know her?
Megan:
The entire situation is tragic, but in regards to cyberbullying, what do you
think? Do you think these tweets contributed to her pain?
Male
2: She was already raped. I don’t think words on the internet could do any more
than what those guys already did.
Female
2: Yea but she still has to deal with the world telling her she was asking for
it.
Female
3: These are terrible, but I guess she’s just going to have to have thick skin.
I mean, the tweets can’t physically hurt her. The rape is definitely worse.
The next set of tweets I showed the group were racist
comments about President Obama.
Megan:
What do you guys think about these examples of cyberbullying?
Female
4: I think it’s so disrespectful and low. Like you can not agree with someone
without resorting to that.
Female
1: Yea these are bad, but he has to be used to that kind of stuff. He signed up
for this when he ran for president.
Male
3: People are going to talk no matter what you do. It’s just life.
Female
2: This is just petty.
The next group of tweets
I showed was from a Twitter that was called “Death to Brianna.” This Twitter
account targeted a specific girl and constantly made death threats to her.
Megan:
Okay what about these? Any thoughts?
Female
2: This is really excessive. Who has the time to make a separate Twitter
account just to do this?
Female
1: This went way too far. I would report this.
Female
3: Some of this is kinda funny….haha….I know that sounds bad, but y’all have to
admit that the one about her husband’s penis was funny.
Male
1: I don’t think the tweets are funny, but I think it’s comical how crazy that
person is.
Female
4: This is scary. Like what the hell, this stuff really happens?
Male
3: I mean yea, I think this person crossed a line, but just delete your Twitter
and turn off the computer or your phone or whatever and it takes care of the
problem. Know what I mean?
I showed the group three
different kinds of cyberbullying though Twitter because I thought it would
elicit different kinds of emotion based on whether the tweets were slut
shamming, making racist comments, or death threats. As it turned out, the type
of cyberbullying did not matter so much. The mentality and general opinions of
cyberbullying were the same throughout these examples. After showing them these
tweets, I asked them a series of questions about their participation in social
media.
Megan:
So when you guys are scrolling through Twitter or any other forms of social
media and you see things like this, what do you do?
Female
2: It makes me sad, and I feel bad for the person. It makes me really hate
people who do this, but like what can I do? I don’t want to get involved and be
the next one they come after.
Male
3: I just scroll past it. It’s just words. Not much we can do. It’s free
speech.
Female
1: I think cyberbullies are cowards, like just say it to their face.
Female
3: I just don’t pay attention to any of it. It doesn’t concern me, and I try to
just mind my own business.
Male
2: This kind of stuff sucks, but bullying is inevitable. It’s always happened
and it’s always going to happen.
From these responses,
it’s clear that people do not understand the very real and serious consequences
of cyberbullying. Our society has a “sticks and stones may break my bones, but
words will never hurt me” mentality. With this mentality and the notion that
these kinds of Tweets are just “free speech,” it creates a concept that
cyberbullying is not a big deal. It dismisses the impacts of cyberbullying,
because under the law, this is legal. And even if these tweets elicited an emotional
response, people act as bystanders for multiple reasons. Whether it’s because
they do not want to get involved, they are afraid of being the next target,
they think the tweets are funny, they don’t believe cyberbullying is a real
problem for society, or they just don’t think that their one voice can make a
difference, people ignore this kind of social media interaction and continue
scrolling through other posts.
After I showed the focus
group these random examples of cyberbullying, I showed the group excerpts from
my ethnographic interviews from cyberbullying victims at Texas Lutheran
University. By sharing these heartbreaking stories that take us into the very
real and painful impacts of cyberbullying, I wanted to see if their reactions
changed knowing that these things happened in their community, to their peers.
“I
think the post painful experience I had with cyberbullying is when people
started commenting on one of my pictures instructing me on how to tie a noose.
One guy even sent a link with specific instructions on how to tie it and use it
so it didn’t hurt as bad. This stuff went on for a couple days. They kept
saying stuff like ‘No one wants you here anyway, were just trying to help you
out.’ And ‘the sooner you just do it, the sooner the world will be a better
place.’ They kept pushing me and trying to persuade me to commit suicide until
one day they got to me. I sat on my floor and contemplated it and thought that
life really wasn’t worth the trouble.”
(Larsen Interviews #7)
Megan:
So this is an excerpt from a TLU student that was cyberbullied during her sophomore
year. What are your thoughts about hearing part of her story?
Male
2: Wait, that really happened here? Shit….
Female
1: Is she okay? What happened?
Megan:
She sought counseling for a long time and is trying to move on with her life,
but these cyber-attacks still impact her life. She has struggled with
depression and low self-esteem.
Female
1: Knowing that this happened here made it a lot more real. It’s easy to scroll
past it on social media, but it’s kinda hard to ignore when it’s happening in
your community.
Male
1: I didn’t even know stuff like that happens here.
Female
4: I didn’t think that tweets could actually do that to someone.
“I
think I still think about myself as that girl in the picture. In some way I
think I became the girl in those pictures because that is how my entire
community saw me. It became a part of who I was even though it wasn’t really
me. What happened back then made me completely lose myself. I think the hardest
part of all of this that still affects me today, is trying to find myself again
and convince my community of who I really am; that I am so much more than the
girl in the pictures. But that’s hard to do when I’m still trying to figure out
who I really am. It’s been a process, but I’m working on it.” (Larsen
Interviews 8)
Megan:
This victim of cyberbullying was slut shamed after being raped. Her cyber
attackers went as far as photo shopping pictures of her face on to some nasty
images. This excerpt describes her experiences dealing with the repercussions
of being a victim of cyberbullying after being a victim of rape. Thoughts on
this one?
Male
3: I didn’t think all that could happen just from words.
Male
2: I take back what I said about the tweets from the Steubenville case. Words
can make it a lot worse.
Female
2: Not just sticks and stones huh?
Female
1: You can cast a broken arm, but how do you recover from something like this?
Female
3: She had to deal with all of this and the rape? I really didn’t think
cyberbullying was that big of a problem and could cause so much damage. I don’t
know… this kinda puts it all in perspective. This is a problem. I hate that
this happened here.
“After
it happened, I kinda went back to my old ways of dealing with stuff by eating a
lot. And I started to make jokes like, about how I love fried chicken and all
this other stuff just to like joke about it. But really, I think I was just
trying to hide the fact that it really hurt me and to hide the fact that I had
gained so much weight. Like 40 more pounds after that happened.”
“I
would rather people not know who I was. And I would rather just kinda get
through and graduate and never have to think about TLU or Seguin ever again.”
(Larsen Interviews #2)
Megan:
Okay, so these are excerpts from a victim of the TLU anonymous Twitter account
that was made in the spring 2015 semester. She was involved in seven different
organizations here on campus, but after becoming a victim of this cyberbully
Twitter account, she quit all extracurricular and moved off campus. What are
your thoughts about this one?
Female
2: I really hate that this happened here. I thought TLU was better than this.
Male
3: I think the fact that she quit all her organizations is a real disservice to
the community. I mean she obviously had to be a good student to be involved in
seven. I think TLU lost a good one because of this.
Female
3: I remember when that Twitter was created. I didn’t know all this happened
after though.
Male
1: How could the school just let this happen and not do anything to stop her
from quitting everything? This is stupid. There is no need for any of this
bullshit.
Female
4: This just goes to show you that everyone is fighting a battle that we don’t
know about. I think this is a good example that words can hurt.
As seen through the data,
the conversation about cyberbullying in this focus group shifted when I showed
the participants personal narratives of cyberbullying victims from their
community. When I just showed them random tweets of different forms of
cyberbullying, the attitude towards this topic was very careless. The group
thought the tweets weren’t necessarily a good thing, and they thought some of
them were sad, but they didn’t really care that this was going on. They didn’t
care enough to step in and do anything because “it wasn’t any of their
business” or “it’s free speech” or “what could they do anyway” or “they didn’t
want to be the next target.” They chose to remain a bystander because they did
not understand the harsh and very real side effects of cyberbullying that I
talked about in my literature review. However, when I showed them the excerpts
from the interviews, the conversation changed directions.
The interviews elicited a
different tone for the remainder of the conversation. These narratives showed
the very real ins and outs the impact of cyberbullying has on the victim. Instead
of responses like “they are just words”, the responses were “I didn’t think
tweets could do that” and “I think this is a good example of how words can
hurt” and “I really didn’t think cyberbullying was that big of a problem and
could cause so much damage. I don’t know… this kinda puts it all in perspective.
This is a problem.” Getting these kind of responses told me that the
participants in this focus group did not know or understand the real side
effects of cyberbullying. Even in my original interviews, every cyberbullying
victim said that they felt like their community did not understand what this
was doing to them, and they were right. The lack of understanding the effects
of cyberbullying plays a part in why people act as a bystander during this kind
of social media interaction.
Another set of
interesting responses generated from the focus group was knowing that these
victims came from the TLU community. Responses were “I really hate that this
happened here. I thought TLU was better than this” and “Knowing that this
happened here made it a lot more real. It’s easy to scroll past it on social
media, but it’s kinda hard to ignore when it’s happening in your community.” The
communal aspect to these narratives added more weight to the cyberbullying
impacts for the participants of this focus group. But why? It is very prevalent
from my original interviews and this focus group that community plays an
important role in their social structure. Being presented with narratives that
took the participants inside the harsh realities of cyberbullying caused the
group to reevaluate their original thoughts about cyberbullying. Just seeing
the tweets of cyberbullying did not make the focus group care, but showing the
impacts of cyberbullying made them feel more of a connection to the victim in
their community. How did adding the communal aspect to the attacks create a
shift in the conversation? There were a couple things compounding each other
that helped contribute to the change in this focus group.
These narratives are sad
stories and sad stories will always elicit an emotional response. We have sad
commercials that encourage you to adopt animals in a shelter by telling you
about their life on the street, and we get phone calls asking us to sponsor a
child in Africa who does not have clean water to drink. We use these sad
stories to play on people’s emotions in hopes that those emotions will lead
people to act in the cause. But these don’t work. We feel bad but empathy on
its own is not enough to make people care. The narratives from these
cyberbullying victims created an emotional response from the focus group but
that alone was not enough to cause them to act. Empathy alone does not create
action. We distance ourselves from emotional concerns so we don’t have to deal
with it. If a commercial comes on with cute, sad dogs giving us puppy dog eyes
with the “Arms of an Angel” song in the background, we turn the channel because
we don’t want to feel sad. If someone calls us with heartbreaking stories about
kids in third world countries without clean water, all we have to do is hang up
the phone. And when we see cyberbullying on social media, we scroll to the next
post. We create a bystander distance for ourselves so we don’t feel bad and so
were not called to take action. However, what if these sad stories impacted you
at a local and communal level?
A local cyberbullying
attack will provoke more care and empathy because it creates a closeness
effect. If a student at a neighboring university to TLU commits suicide as a
result of being a cyberbullying victim, we are going to feel some empathy for
that community because we are part of the local universities in the region;
whether we knew the student or not. But that alone isn’t going to create enough
empathy for us to act. Demographic identification alone isn’t enough to make
people care. However, when you add community to the localism, it elicits more
of a response. For example, the first set of tweets I showed the focus group
about a sexual assault case, Female #3 said “These are terrible, but I guess
she’s just going to have to have thick skin. I mean, the tweets can’t
physically hurt her. The rape is definitely worse.” Gender in this case creates
somewhat of a closeness effect, and there is some empathy from the participant
to the victim, but the thoughts on cyberbullying remain the same. However, after
showing the excerpt from interview #8 about the sexual assault victim in her
community who had pictures photo shopped of her after the attack, Female #3
responded “She had to deal with all of this and the rape? I really didn’t think
cyberbullying was that big of a problem and could cause so much damage. I don’t
know… this kinda puts it all in perspective. This is a problem. I hate that
this happened here.” The demographic identification, mixed with seeing the real
side effects of cyberbullying, and knowing this happened in her community,
created a shift in the way Female #3 talked about cyberbullying. When localism
and community work together, it multiples the amount of potential empathy in
this case.
The communal aspect of
cyberbullying plays a part in eliciting an emotional response, and from the
participant’s responses in this focus group community matters. But how much
does it really matter? Our connection to our community is always contingent
based on our existing matrix of our community. Something like cyberbullying
changes the nature of community involvement. Depending on your positionality in
community determines how you view something like this. If you aren’t involved in your community and
hate your community and you see something like this happen, if furthers your
choice to not be involved in community. A cyberbullying attack can elicit an
emotional response that causes you not to act.
If you are involved in community and you think community matters, seeing
the side effects of cyberbullying happen in your community can elicit enough of
an emotional response to make you act. But to what extent? I conducted this
focus group almost two weeks ago, and since then, these student have had
finals, had to move out of their dorms, and they have the essence of Christmas
break teasing them. So do I think that these students have had such an empathic
response to act in a way in their community to make a difference in
cyberbullying culture? Probably not. Are they still thinking about the impacts
cyberbullying had on their fellow Bulldogs and their community? My optimistic,
wanting to change the world side of me wants to hope that they are, but in all
honestly, they are probably most concerened with things going on in their lives
at the present moment. I believe their emotional responses to these excerpts
were real and genuine at the time, but again, my back to my question, to what
extent did these emphatic responses play in their changing their bystander
position on cyberbullying? Even if the participants are more aware of the role
they play in these kinds of social media interactions, the local and communal
multiplied empathetic responses have had at least a minor impact. But that’s
not enough in changing the mid set of cyberbullying culture.
So what’s next on my
conquest to change cyberbullying culture?
My original research showed me that the impacts of cyberbullying on an
individual can cause an extreme social disconnect in the community. So I went
out and studied cyberbullying in the community. The data from the focus group
revealed to me that there needs to be more education and awareness about
cyberbullying because people do not see the impact behind the tweet. However,
this only goes so far. Communal empathy played a large role in understanding
the impact of cyberbullying and helped with the awareness, however empathy
alone cannot elicit action. I need to conduct more focus groups to see if this
shift in conversation happens again. I need some perspectives of cyberbullying
from different members of the community like the responders in higher education
and the professors, not just students. I need to try to understand all sides of
cyberbullying in the community. Even if I were to conduct all this research and
the responses turned out the same as this focus group, how does this contribute
to persuading people to take action? And even if I was able to encourage people
to stop being a bystander, is it enough to change cyberbullying culture? I need to research how awareness, empathy,
and persuasion function together and within a community. If I can understand
how awareness, empathy and persuasion function in terms of cyberbullying, then
maybe I can create a model to elicit action. But no community is the same, just
because one model works for one community, does not mean it will work for
another. It’s going to be a lot of trial, and error and taking what I learned
and then drawing a new model and testing it again. But even then, I’m assuming
that people taking action will be enough to create a change. Is action enough
to spark a social movement? Or is the
current mindset that bullying is inevitable hold strong despite the efforts of
taking action and creating a social movement? Again, my optimistic, wanting to
change the world side of me wants to believe that if we can take the right
actions, find the right model, the right equation, or the right responses, then
maybe we can have a shot at making a change. This is the next step to creating
a social movement to change cyberbullying culture. There is so much more
research, writing, and thinking to be done in order to do this, but every step of
my research has opened a new concept of this phenomenon to explore. I’ve come a
long way on this journey so far, and I still have a long way to go, but hey,
Rome wasn’t built in a day. Here’s to the next step.
