Social risks of cyberspace. Report 1 : Cyberbullying

Social risks of cyberspace Report 1 : Cyberbullying Premise There are various social risks tied to cyberspace. Many of them are social risks because they are cultural risks, like virtual identity construction and interaction in social networks. Toxic evils like cyberbullying and other malicious cybercrimes can give the impression that technological advances are bad and that children and youth would be better off if they did not have access to the Internet, cellular phones, etc. This is not the correct way to tackle the problem of cyberspace risks, which is an issue very insidious and increasing. Indeed, technology can be a very good thing: Internet provides useful information and represent a free window towards the world. Not only it opens up sources of knowledge to people (adolescents in particular) that might otherwise were too difficult to access, but technology also affords around easy means of establishing and maintaining social contacts. For many persons – see the field of assistive technologies – new technologies may offer powerful solutions and contribute in saving costs and creating new professions and services , as well as alternative and effective forms of citizens’ participation. The Internet and related technologies have a positive impact on our life: the problem is how some people maliciously use them. Although, investigating and diffusing knowledge about their abuse can mitigate the negative effects. Considering its continuous growing, this report is focused on cyberbullying. What is cyberbullying? It is opportune introducing the concept of traditional bullying before facing the cyber bullying issue. Bullying is when people repeatedly and deliberately hurt, harass, threaten, intimidate someone else. Often, blackmail and other forms of violence accompany the above actions. Bullying can include name-calling, teasing, bedeviling, physical attacks, abusive letters and text messages, repeated phone calls and e-mails, rumor-spreading and gossip and many other evil deeds of the same kind. In general, the target of bullying is attacked on the basis of race, religion, gender, appearance, sexuality, disability or ethnicity. Bullying can take place anywhere, in school, in sport places, in workplaces, etc. Bullying usually involves a person or a group exploiting the fact that they feel more powerful than another. Bullies are attracted by easy target, prefer those who have problems of integration, fragile personalities and physically weak people. Target of bullies mainly comprises those people considered by a group or a community as part of the category of "other". Mainly, the body language of their victims draws attention of bullies, such as a poor posture or the shy attitude of averting eye contact. Traditional bullies can bully only in person and one can recognize them immediately and attempt to escape by them. In fact, bullies don’t dissimulate their personality with their victims and they want directly spread fear and humiliation. They seek for physical contact with their targets. Bullying, whether physical, verbal, indirect or relational, was defined as a systematic abuse of power that is both persistent and intentional (Nansel et al., 2001; Besag, 2006; Bowie, 2007; Murray-Close et al., 2007; Rivers et al., 2007; Williams & Guerra, 2007). Ian Rivers and Nathalie Noret (2010) observed that various studies of bullying perpetration and victimization have found an age difference in boys’ and girls’ exposure to bullying, with younger boys opting for direct-physical forms of aggression (e.g. hitting, kicking, and punching) more readily than girls, who use direct-verbal (e.g. name-calling and labeling), and indirect or relational aggression (the spreading of malicious gossip, rumor mongering, and social isolation). However, more recent longitudinal data gathered by Pepler et al. (2008) have shown that differences between the sexes in terms of exposure to different types of bullying reduce with age. Instead, cyberbullying is a particular form of bullying (Kowalski and Limber 2007). It is a relatively new issue which principally, cyberbullying is described as bullying that occurs through media and communication devices such as mobile phones, email, andthe Internet (e.g. social networking sites, web pages, and blogs). Cyberbullies threaten, scare, libel, humiliate, and offend their victims from far away. They use pictures, movies, e-mails, messages and comments to harass and pick on their targets on Web. Unlike other forms of bullying where there has been a long-standing general agreement among researchers about the repeated nature of the behavior, studies of cyberbullying have been less restrictive in applying a definition that requires a persistent and meaningful interaction between the perpetrator and the victim, primarily as a result of the anonymity cyberbullying affords the perpetrator (Wolak et al., 2007). In her book, Nancy Willard (2004) identified seven different categories of common cyberbullying actions: Flaming: Sending angry, rude, vulgar messages about a person to an online group or to that person via email or other text messaging. Online harassment: Repeatedly sending offensive messages via email or other text messaging to a person. Cyberstalking: Online harassment that includes threats of harm or is excessively intimidating. Denigration (put-downs): Sending harmful, untrue, or cruel statements about a person to other people or posting such material online. Masquerade: Pretending to be someone else and sending or posting material that makes that person look bad. Outing: Sending or posting material about a person that contains sensitive, private, or embarrassing information, including forwarding private messages or images. Exclusion: Cruelly excluding someone from an online group. How is cyberbullying different from bullying? Norwegian researcher Dr. Dan Olweus is the pioneering researcher in the field of bullying prevention and the creator of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, the most researched and best-known bullying prevention program available today.Dan Olweus claims that aggressiveness, repetitively, and power are the three key components to bullying behavior: Bullying is thus characterized by the following three criteria: (a) it is aggressive behavior or intentional "harmdoing;" (b) it is carried out repeatedly and over time; and (c) it occurs within an interpersonal relationship characterized by an imbalance of power. <http://www.colorado.edu/cspv/blueprints/modelprograms/BPP.html>, (retrieved: February 3, 2013). Bullies behavior is aggressive in nature, designed to hurt the other person’s feelings or relationship with others, or even to frighten him or her. The person being targeted has a hard time defending him or herself and bullying behavior often occurs without apparent provocation.. Cyberbullyng shares with traditional bullying the intentional aggressive behavior. Cyberbullies put online embarrassing pictures or send libeling, injurious and evil messages to make their target feel bad. The most recurrent posted message is ‘I h 8 u’ followed by other insults. ‘I h 8 u’ (= I hate you) is a short form usually used in chat rooms). The violence is non at physical level, but it is the same basic motive of bullying. Even cyberbullying is usually repetitive, or by its very nature it can be viewed multiple times by the person who is targeted digitally: a one-time nasty text message may not match the definition of bullying behavior. The main difference between traditional bullying and cyberbullying lies in the fact that traditional bullying is power-based, and this power is expressed through a direct, aggressive contact with the targeted people. For this reason bullying can be considered a form of abuse. The distinctiveness of this abuse is that it is a peer abuse. What sets it apart from other forms of abuse such as child or domestic abuse is the context in which it occurs and the relationship of the interacting parties. The most important features that we need to be aware of in regards to cyberbullying is that in cyberbullying the identity of the perpetrator is usually unknown. Very often the targeted individual is not sure who posted particular comments or set up a fake profile. Not knowing who is the abuser can lead to victims a sense of powerlessness, but the ability to be anonymous can induce a phenomenon of disinhibition, pushing people to say or do things online that they wouldn’t normally do because they feel invisible. Quing Li claims (2007) that factors like gender, culture, knowledge of safety strategies, and frequency of computer use, may provide valuable information to assess possible involvement with cyberbullying. The author sustains the importance of comparative studies about bullying and cyberbullying for understanding of how cyberbullying is influenced by traditional ways of harassment. Studies on cyberbullying Table 1 reports the key studies of cyberbullying since 2002; it has been developed and extended from Kowalski et al. (2008) by Rivers and Noret (2010). Study n Age range Method Type of cyberbullying investigated Finkelhor et al. (2000) 1501 10–17 Representative national survey— Youth Internet Safety Survey— YISS 1 (US) Online harassment: instant message, Internet chat room, and email NCH (now Action for Children) (2002) 856 11–19 Survey (UK) SMS/text message, Internet chat room, and email Ybarra and Mitchell (2004) 1501 10–17 Representative national survey— YISS 1—1999– 2000 (US) see YISS 1 NCH ‘Putting U in the Picture—Mobile Bullying Survey’ (2005) 770 11–19 Survey (UK) SMS/text message, Internet chat room, and email Li (2005) 177 12–13 Survey (Canada) of students in 7th grade Unspecified behaviour— email, Internet chat room, and mobile phone (it is unclear whether this includes SMS/text message and/or verbal abuse) Agatston and Carpenter (2006) 257 11–14 Middle school student survey grades 6–8 (USA) Instant message, and website Fight Crime Pre-teen (2006) 503 6–11 Telephone survey (USA) SMS/text message, email, instant message, website, Internet chat room, and Photo Fight Crime Teen (2006) 512 12–17 Telephone survey (USA) SMS/text message, email, instant message, website, Internet chat room, and Photo Kowalski and Limber (2006) 3767 11–14 Survey of students in grades 6–8 (USA) Electronically bullied: email, instant message, chat room, website, and SMS/text message. Kowalski and Witte (2006) 700 > 11 Survey of predominantly college students (USA) Instant message, Internet chat room, and email Li (2006) 264 12–15 Survey Online bullying: blog, instant message, and email Patchin and Hinduja (2006) 384 < 18 Online survey (USA) SMS/text message, Internet chat room, email, bulletin board, computer text messaging, and newsgroup Smith et al. (2006) 92 11–16 Survey (UK) Mobile/cell phone call, SMS/text message, email, picture/video clip, instant message, website, and Internet chat room Ybarra et al. (2006) 150 10–17 Representative national survey— YISS 2—2005— (US see YISS 1 WiredSafety (2006) >900 >7 Online survey Bullied online Williams and Guerra (2007) 1378 < 18 Online survey (USA) Computer text messaging, email, SMS/txt message, Internet chat room, bulletin board, and newsgroup Li (2007) 461 12–15 Survey Computer use in cyberbullying Smith et al. (2008) 533 11–16 School survey Mobile/cell phone call, SMS/ text message, email, picture/video clip, instant message, website, and Internet chat room Gender differences There are gender similarities and differences in cyberbullying? Studies curry out on traditional forms of bullying have found that boys are more likely than girls to bully (Currie et al., 2004; Nansel et al., 2001; Olweus, 1993), but findings are less consistent when looking at gender differences in experiences of being bullied. Some studies have found that boys report higher rates of bully victimization than girls, whereas others have found no gender differences or only slight differences between boys and girls (Kowalski et al., 2008). Boys are more likely to be physically bullied by their peers (Finkelhor et al., 2005; Nansel et al., 2001; Olweus, 1993; Rigby, 2002), whereas girls are more likely to be bullied through rumor-spreading or through sexual comments or gestures (Nansel et al., 2001). It also is important to note that, although boys are typically bullied by other boys (and rarely girls), girls are bullied by both boys and girls (Finkelhor et al., 2005; Nansel et al., 2001; Olweus, 1993). Boys who are bullied by boys are more likely to indicate that they were physically and verbally bullied. Girls are bullied by girls more often through social exclusion (e.g., leaving another girl out of a group's social activities, and doing so in a hurtful way and on purpose). A survey study of 264 students from three junior high schools showed that close to half of the students were bully victims and about one in four had been cyber-bullied. Over half of the students reported that they knew someone being cyberbullied. Almost half of the cyberbullies used electronic means to harass others more than three times. The majority of the cyber-bully victims and bystanders did not report the incidents to adults. When gender was considered, significant differences were identified in terms of bullying and cyberbullying. Males were more likely to be bullies and cyberbullies than their female counterparts. In addition, female cyberbully victims were more likely to inform adults than their male counterparts (Li, 2006). How cyberbullies work Cyberbullies use Web sites and message boards to tell lies and act tough. As traditional bullies, also cyberbullies bully for a reason. Thus, it is important knowing how cyberbullies work because it can help to deal with them. Cyberbullies ought to know Web technologies and, from some time, how social networks work. Cyberbullying is affected by technologies evolutions. Parry (2005) noted that, with the advent of ‘camera phones’, has come the ability of one person to take compromising or inappropriate photographs or make videos of an unwitting individual and distribute those images and videos among peers with the intention of shaming or otherwise embarrassing the target. Often, cyberbullies pretend to be someone they are not and they think they will not get caught. Debbie Roome (2012, pp. 26-27) lists the motivations underlying the cyber bullies behavior: Many cyber-bullies enjoy the sense of power they have over their victims. The response they get often encourages them to continue and even intensify their attacks. Some people bully online to try and increase their own popularity or sense of worth. It may increase their self-esteem in a strange way and they enjoy presenting themselves as an expert. Jealousy is another reason people bully. Bullies may torment others in a bid to get attention or to cause fear in their victim. Cultural and racial differences can cause cyber-bullying and in these cases, hurtful comments and discrimination are common. People who have been brought up in dysfunctional families or who have experienced social rejection themselves are more likely to bully others. In some cases, bullies are victims of bullying themselves and lash out at you to try and make themselves feel better. Personality disorders can make it impossible for a person to see that their bullying is inappropriate. Mental problems are another cause of cyberbullying. Immaturity is a factor in some cases of cyberbullying. The perpetrator may be unaware of the level of pain and emotional suffering they are inflicting on their victim. This is case with children and teenagers. Some people cyber-bully anonymously with the mistaken belief that they will never be caught. One can add to the above list the various expression of envy and grudge and the fact that cyberbullying doesn’t require physical contact. Cyberbullies can think that their injuries are inflicted not to a real person but to his/her virtual profile. Target of cyberbullies Ian Rivers and Nathalie Noret (2010) are the authors of a study on the nasty or threatening text and email messages received by students in academic years 7 and 8 (11–13 years of age) attending 13 secondary schools in the North of England between 2002 and 2006. Results indicated that, over five years, the number of pupils receiving one or more nasty or threatening text messages or emails increased significantly, particularly among girls. However, receipt of frequent nasty or threatening text and email messages remained relatively stable. For boys, being a victim of direct-physical bullying was associated with receiving nasty or threatening text and email messages; for girls it was being unpopular among peers. Boys received more hate-related messages and girls were primarily the victims of name-calling. There are groups of people targeted more frequently than others (Mitchel et al., 2003). The following are some typical bullying targets, but it should be remembered that people who don't fit into any of these groups could be equally targeted and sometimes the victims are people who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time: children and adults with mental and physical disabilities; anyone who stands out as being different (because of different ethnic origins, cultural and religious beliefs) or only doesn't belong to resident community; teenagers and children who are considered nerds, geeks and losers; people with annoying habits or not accepted behavioral manners; those who come from a poor socioeconomic class. Olweus (1993) claims that, although there is no single profile of passive victims of bullying, research suggests that bullied children have one or more of the following characteristics: They are typically quiet, cautious, sensitive children who may be easily moved to tears. They may be insecure, have little confidence, and suffer from low self-esteem. They often have few friends and are socially isolated. They may be afraid of being hurt. They may be anxious or depressed. They tend to be physically weaker than their peers (especially in the case of boys). They may find it easier to spend time with adults (parents, teachers, coaches) than same-age peers. Sign and effects of cyberbullying From cyberbullying stories it appears that some behaviors of targeted people are recurrent, like repeated accidents, included self-cutting or stabbing self with a pencil, or posing own face in a disfiguring way. There are also physical symptoms, which vary greatly and include somatic symptoms or actual illness. The most common are all stress-related problems such as bed-wetting, nightmares accompanied by vomiting, or anxiety attacks. There are less evident symptoms, like distraction, loss of attention, to be daydreaming, etc. Defending against cyberbullyies Bullying and ciberbullying can be a phenomenon strictly tied. The ability for an abuser to have a vast audience and for their digital abuse to intensify the pervasiveness of an experience of bullying is a significant issue and one that must be addressed in efforts at bullying prevention. To stop cyberbullying the easiest thing to do seems shut up the Internet connection or cancel your profile in social networks. This radical solution is not pursued. The shame for the humiliations suffered continue out of Internet. Moreover, if one is a member of a social network is interested to know the opinions of people associated to the social network. However, defending against cyberbullyies is possible. There are many Web sites that offer advice and support to contrast them. There are also commercial and free software for parental control. Parents can limit the amount of time children spend online, they can also limit the Web sites that children visit by using blocking feature, where you simply type in the web site addresses Some parents software allow the keywords feature to filter out unwanted language and rude discourse from email and instant messaging exchanges. There are also available tools for image analysis, which will help prevent inappropriate photos being displayed to young people. Of course, all tools have a limited scope regarding the prevention of cyberbullying. Nothing can take the place of an attentive and responsive parent when a child is bullied, either online or offline. For example, if a child no longer shows his/her normal amount of activity time and interest in the computer games/places s/he is victim of cyberbullying. Or, the reverse, if a child immediately closes the browser when one enters his/her room and then becomes evasive about answering questions concerning his/her activity, this is another clue. The better means of defense is education about cyberbullying risks, giving either to adults or children information and examples, which stimulate their right reaction. From Megan Meier to Amanda Todd Two cases can be assumed as exemplar of the evolution of cyberbullying, the case of Megan Meier and the one of Amanda Todd. The case of Amanda Todd demonstrates how virtual and real reality are now beginning to make part of an undistinguished whole. New technologies are not only used to amplify the effect of the attack to a target, but also to rouse the aggressiveness in social Web communities, which role and the weight is more and more growing. The Megan Meier case is so synthetized on Wikipedia: Megan Taylor Meier (November 6, 1992 – October 17, 2006) was an American teenager from Dardenne Prairie, Missouri, who committed suicide by hanging three weeks before her fourteenth birthday. A year later, Meier's parents prompted an investigation into the matter and her suicide was attributed to cyber-bullying through the social networking website MySpace. Lori Drew, the mother of a friend of Meier, was indicted on the matter in 2008, but in 2009, she was acquitted. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Megan_Meier>, retrieved: 4 February 2013. According to the Web site that is dedicated to her memory, <http://www.meganmeierfoundation.org/megansStory.php>, retrieved: 4 February 2013. at the age of thirteen, the life of Megan was starting to be good: she had lost twenty pounds, changed schools (from public to private) and a boy posing as a sixteen-year old, Josh Evans, contacted her through Myspace and expressed interest to her. But the relationship with this presumed boy suddenly changes. He begin to post messages stating a day that Megan is “a slut” and that she was “fat”. The day of suicide Megan received vulgar messages. Her mother was aggravated at her for reading them and Megan was reportedly furious that her parents weren’t “on her site”. After Megan suicide, her parents learned that the sixteen-year old boy never even existed, He was a hoax: he was invented by the Megan’s former friend mother. In the Megan’s sad story, there are some points to be considered: The fake identity of the boy, and the messages written by different persons knowing the password to the account; The unnamed adults implicated in the hoax. The incomprehension that Megan feels by her mother, who was annoyed instead to be “to her side” (it is the expression used by Megan before committing suicide). The Amanda Todd story is so reported in Wikipedia: On September 7, 2012, Todd posted a 9-minute YouTube video entitled My Story: Struggling, bullying, suicide and self harm, which showed her using a series of flash cards to tell of her experiences being bullied. The video post went viral, receiving over 1,600,000 views by October During the video, Todd writes that when she was in Grade 7 she used video chat to meet new people over the Internet and she received compliments on her looks. A stranger convinced Todd to bare her breasts on camera. The individual later blackmailed her with threats to expose the topless photo to her friends unless she gave a "show". Todd wrote that during the next Christmas break, police informed her at 4:00 am that the photo was circulating the Internet. Todd wrote that she experienced anxiety, depression, and panic disorder because of this. Her family moved to a new home, where Todd later stated that she began using drugs and alcohol. A year later, the individual reappeared, creating a Facebook profile which used the topless photograph as the profile image, and contacting classmates at her new school. Again Todd was teased, eventually changing schools for a second time. She wrote that she began chatting to "an old guy friend" who appeared to her. The friend asked Todd to come to his house where they had sex while his girlfriend was on holiday. The following week, the girlfriend and a group of others attacked Todd at school while shouting insults and punching her to the ground. Following the attack, Todd attempted suicide by drinking bleach, but she was rushed to hospital to have her stomach pumped. After returning home, Todd discovered abusive messages about her failed suicide attempt posted to Facebook. Her family moved to another city to start afresh, but Todd was unable to escape the past. Six months later further messages and abuse were still being posted to social networking sites. Her mental state worsening, she began to engage in self-mutilation. Despite taking anti-depressants and receiving counseling, she took an overdose and spent two days in hospital. Todd was teased by other students at her school for her low grades, a consequence of a language-based learning disability and the time she spent in the hospital to treat her severe depression. On October 10, 2012 at about 6:00 PM (PDT), Todd was found hanged at her home. The Amanda Tood story starts, as the one of Megan, with an anonymous who presents itself like a friend and through flatteries receives confidences and, in the case of Amanda, a topless photo. But the second part of the Amanda’s story is very different. Amanda is physically attacked by known persons and suffers harassments by her classmates. Messages about her failed suicide are diffused on Facebook and insulting messages against her are posted in social network sites. In the case of Amanda, we assist to a group fury either on Web or in the real life. Experiences and protective measures in Latvia Several projects were implemented in this area in Latvia. One of them was the project "Safety Online". Its originator was Microsoft, and the project was supported by the State Inspectorate for Protection of Children's Rights, the project "Net-Safe Latvia", and a number of nongovernmental organizations. People can find trustworthy and practical advices concerning online safety on the campaign's webpage <http://www.draudzigsinternets.lv/html/etusivu.htm> (retrieved: 4 February 2013). These advices help even to the most vulnerable users to feel safe, while working online. About protective measure, there are materials available online for teachers, parents or carers. Materials for teachers are developed with the aim to facilitate their work in the following areas: discussing with pupils information safety issues; finding out how children use the Internet; finding out for what purposes personal information is used on the Internet; finding out where to look for additional information. Materials for parents or carers offer a visualized "Guide to the Safe Use of the Internet Environment" that includes online discussions, children's rights on the Internet, opportunity to inform about problems and descriptions for safe Internet usage accordingly to the age: 7 - 9 years, 10 - 12 years and 13 - 15 years. Information in Latvian, Russian and English languages ​​can be obtained for parents, students and social workers in the webpage: < http://www.netsafe.lv/page/116 > (retrieved: 8 February 2013) The research "Modern Technology Usage and Internet Safety" was conducted from May to June 2010 and provides information on knowledge of internet safety issues and habits of modern technology usage of children, adolescents, their parents and teachers. Research was conducted using quantitative research method – indirect computerized interview – and provides results of 2017 respondents. Information on the research conducted was disseminated in schools inviting teachers to inform their students about the survey happening and use the computer lessons for filling out the questionnaire. Key results of the research show: By the age of 13 more than 90% of children use internet and they own personal mobile phone; 35% of children aged 6 – 13 and 54% aged 14 – 18 claimed that their parents do not limit their mobile phone usage by any means; 42 – 47% children and adolescents consider that internet usage can’t cause any threats to them; More than 40% of children and adolescents acknowledge that they have come across on unpleasant pornographic materials, which have been accessible without any warnings. 39% said that they have come across violent materials. 22 – 31% claimed they have been bullied online. 10% aged 6 – 13 and 19%  aged 14 – 18 claimed that they have received sexual proposals from adults; 19% said that they have received unpleasant calls and SMS via mobile phones; 9% said that they have received threatening SMS or materials via mobile phones and 5% claimed that they have received unpleasant sexual materials or SMS in their mobile phones; General result was that children and adolescents have good understanding of what is and is not appropriate online 10 – 13% children and adolescents claimed that they have been bullying someone whether using mobile phone or internet. <http://www.netsafe.lv/page/116> (retrieved: 8 February 2013) Bibliographic references Besag, V. 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An exploration of online harassment by known peers and online-only contacts, “Journal of Adolescent Health”, 41(2007), 6 (Supplement), pp. 51–58 ezekne Augstskola – Personality and Socialization Research Institute Threath of cyberspace – new qualification of a social worker Social risks of cyberspace – Report 1 February 2013 12