cyberbullying

Note to readers: This article and its corresponding links discuss rape, victim blaming, “slut” shaming, and rape culture generally.

The disturbing events in Steubenville, Ohio have spurred some insightful reporting and analysis (collected by Lisa Wade at Sociological Images) that, one would hope, raise awareness about rape culture.  As a social scientist that studies social media, I am particularly interested in how privacy and connectivity have been framed within the context of the case. I cannot help but notice the sloppiness with which many reporters write about the “dangerous mix of alcohol, sex and social media that many teens navigate nowadays.”  Studying the role of social media in everyday life may appear as trivial or superficial: something fun or novel to study. But Steubenville shows us exactly why writers and scholars need to understand social media better. more...

A little over a year ago, I found myself conducting a focus group session with a handful of middle school students. As part of a research project looking to better understand how Internet safety programs conceptualize youth and Internet technologies, I became increasingly surprised – and at least somewhat frustrated – that cyberbullying rarely came during dozens of conversations with students, parents and school administrators. This particular focus group session was no different. Nearing the end of the session, I finally asked the students if they used the word cyberbullying when they talked to their friends. Their response, looking at me as if I was the most out-of-touch idiot they had ever spoken with, was a unanimous “Nooo!” I then asked them: If you do not use the word, who does? Various students replied with disgusted exclamations of “Parents!” or “Teachers!” and in what would be one of the defining moments of the project, a student said “It’s an old lady word” quietly under her breath. Looking beyond some problematic ageism and sexism that may be implied in her response, there is an element of truth behind what she was saying: children are using a very different interpretive frame than parents when it comes to so-called “cyber-bullying.” more...

I like Ellen DeGeneres. Lots of people respect what she does and she has a reputation of treating people right. However, I was surprised when I came across a clip from her popular daytime television show where she unsuspectingly broadcasts compromising Facebook photos of random audience members, a sketch I saw for the first time yesterday, and there seems to be at least a few more of these on YouTube.

I get it, it’s a gag on context collapse: photos taken in and for one time and place are dislocated onto broadcast television, to unexpected and hilarious results. Cute. However, the reality of this is not so funny, and The Ellen DeGeneres Show should know better.

The problem here is that Ellen is setting a precedent that it is okay and fun to share each others information to a larger audience than was initially intended; that blasting compromising photos from someone’s Facebook profile to other audiences, large or small, is a funny joke. For many, it isn’t.

Ellen’s lighthearted joke takes the form of much modern bullying; especially what is often called “cyberbullying” more...

The Cyborgology editors, again, appear on WYPR (Baltimore’s NPR affiliate). Listen to the audio here. We discuss “cyber-support”, something we have touched on before.

Social media sites like Facebook and Formspring have created new forums for bullying—you may have heard the word “cyberbullying” thrown around.

But social media also provides an opportunity for marginalized groups to gather for support—and occasionally to fight back. Our social media gurus Nathan Jurgenson and P.J. Rey call this “cybersupport.” You can see it at sites like Harassmap, the“3,000 Campaign” against sexual assault, and iHollaback.

Today Nathan and P.J. join Sheilah to talk about this type of networking and the effects it can have—intended and unintended—in physical space.

Nathan Jurgenson and P.J. Rey are Ph.D. candidates in sociology at the University of Maryland, and they blog at Cyborgology.

Also, there will be a panel on so-called cyber-support at the Theorizing the Web conference we are throwing on April 9th.

George Washington University students have taken action against sexual assault on their campus, and, interestingly, are using the social media site Formspring. Several student organizations have banded together to create the “3000 campaign” (which makes reference to the estimated number of GW students who will experience sexual asaault). The campaign adeptly uses Formspring to allow students to anonymously report sexual assaults. The Formspring page is here. See DC sex and gender columnist Amanda Hess’ excellent coverage of this story here and here.

Cyborgology editors PJ Rey and I have made the point before that social media is often painted as dangerous without looking to the new ways in which it provides support. Yes, bullying occurs on Facebook, but we can also think about how social media has been leveraged to provide social support, for instance, with Dan Savage’s YouTube-based It Gets Better Campaign. I also recently discussed Egypt’s Harassmap, which helps women organize over social media to fight harassment. The site that has been arguably most notorious in the recent fervor over cyber-bullying is Formspring.me (for those who do not know, users on this site answer questions often asked anonymously). The site is connected with a suicide and researcher danah boyd has stated that, more...

The term “cyberbullying” is frequently used to describe hurtful behaviors occurring via communication technologies. But why distinguish “cyber” bullying from other forms of bullying?  Perhaps it is partly because, when thinking of bullying, we tend to envision physical violence, something impossible to accomplish over the Web. Perhaps it is because the Web allows for new and vastly different forms of communication, necessitating new terminologies. Indeed, social media, mobile phones, and other recent technologies have created new ways for bullying to occur. For instance, the anonymity one has on Formspring has certainly contributed to a groundswell of hurtful behaviors on that site.  Moreover, bullying can now occur at virtually any time and in any place (with Internet access).

However, as danah boyd has previously pointed out, the term “cyberbullying” is quite loaded because it tends to be used in a way that seems to diminish the significance of an act of bullying. Yet, bullying is bullying, whether it occurs in a school, park, bus, or on the Web. (A rough definition of bullying for our purposes here: the repeated use of hurtful behaviors, such as, but not limited to, insults, rumors, threats, intimidation, coercion, exclusion, physical violence, or vandalism.)

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