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.)
Cases of so-called cyberbullying have been quite dramatic. Some have even led the victims to commit suicide. In one high-profile case, an adult, pretending to be a young boy, used MySpace to woo and, ultimately, humiliate a teenage girl named Megan Meier. The woman’s daughter was friends with Megan. They all even lived on the same street. Megan and the daughter’s relation was strained by some misunderstandings prior to the incident. The women created the hoax as a way to retaliate on behalf of her daughter. After several weeks of building Megan’s trust and interest in the fabricated boy, the woman then switched gears and told Megan that “the world would be a better place” without her. Megan, then, hung herself.
More recently, a male Rutgers Student named Tyler Clementi was secretly videotaped by his roommate having a sexual encounter with another man. Tyler did not openly identify himself as gay or bisexual. The roommate then streamed the video over the Internet. Humiliated, Tyler subsequently killed himself after posting the following status to Facebook: “Jumping off the gw bridge sorry.”
There has been much outcry over the dangers of these so-called “cyberbullying” behaviors. But the term obscures the reality: while the traces of bullying are highly visible online, these behaviors are generally reflections of similar behavior that is going on in the material world. Bullying might begin face-to-face, move onto the Facebook, then be picked up back up at school. The boundaries between the material and digital worlds are often quite blurred. Social behaviors, including harmful ones, are moving fluidly back and forth through atoms and bits. Semantically and conceptually separating “cyberbullying” from traditional forms of bullying obscures the fact that this is all the same behavior.
Yet, we cannot focus only on how the Web has been used to enact new ways to bully. It has also been used to create new spaces for social support. For example, in response to the many suicides resulting from the bullying of queer teenagers, Dan Savage and his husband launched the “It Gets Better” YouTube campaign that attempts to help these teens get through the bullying by imagining a better future. The campaign has been a huge success; even President Obama has posted a video.
Part of why Dan Savage created this YouTube project was because many queer teens, especially in rural areas, do not have access to other queer individuals that can act as support networks and role-models. Yet, virtually no one is calling this “cybersupport.” Indeed, it is simply support (however, that this term is unused also highlights a general bias against social media). Let’s not let the “cyber” prefix conceal the fact that (1) bullying often flows quickly across the digital and materials worlds and (2) the Web can be used to enact both harmful and helpful behaviors in new ways.
Comments 7
Joe — October 29, 2010
Well put. I agree that cyberbullying and material bullying are virtually indistinguishable behaviors that only really differ in the bully's choice of weapon. I also agree that attaching the term "cyber-" to the problem is a convenient and sensationalist way of dressing up the real problem.
However, aren't all acts of bullying based on battles between separate actors (individuals, groups, states, etc) for access to social capital? When you shove the weaker kid on the playground, call him a fag, and laugh about it with your friends, you diminish that kid's social capital while simultaneously increasing your own. The cruelty and hatred behind those actions are rooted in a desire to dominate, therefore granting yourself a seat at the table of People Who Decide What is Awesome.
The thing about that "cyber-" prefix is that the table of awesomeness gets a whole lot bigger, and the seats around it get a whole lot more valuable, as Internet technologies and social media capabilities become more ubiquitous. The stakes for social capital are higher. On the playground, getting your face shoved into the dirt exposes you to humiliation from dozens of other kids at most. But the Internet is a much larger platform, where news and media stream without care or concern for questions of time or space. The Internet has become such a behemoth force for disciplinary power that we can barely conceive of a situation in which something could go up on the web and *not* be seen by everyone we know.
The playground also had teachers patrolling, sometimes with whistles at the ready to pounce on bullying and stop it in its tracks. The Internet has no such overseers. So-called "cyber watchdogs" do exist, but those dogs have been neutered by the novelty and multisitedness of such cyberbullying issues. Legislation is only recently catching up to the technology, and to date only about 1/5 of states have legislation in place that make specific provisions against cyberbullying, usually in the name of maintaining the "safe space" ethos of American public school culture.
I think you're right that we need to be mindful of the fact that cyberbullying often stems from or leads to bullying and violence in the material world. The boundary between those worlds is both porous and ill-defined. But I would argue that while cyberbullying may bleed into materiality and back again, ad nauseam, we must still be mindful of the fact that cyberbullying is a unique phenomenon in this particular historical and cultural context. Cyberbullying will always be a unique--and sensationalized--form of social conflict as long as dominant thought continues to perceive of the Internet only as a monolithic, gaze-extending weapon for mutual surveillance.
That "cyber-" prefix will be relevant until our cultural understanding of the Internet changes, and we begin to see it for what it is: a global marketplace of individuals, with near-limitless potential to change how we do society. Until we begin to change out thinking, the Internet will always just be one big playground.
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