The Effects of Social Media and Cuberbulling on Students' Safety

The article titled “Youth, Social Media and Cyberbullying Among Australian Youth: Sick Friends” was produced by five authors named Pam Nilan, Haley Burgess, Mitchell Hobbs, Steven Threadgold and Wendy Alexander. The article is published on the Journal of Social Media + Society in year 2015. The article depicts research pertaining to Australian youths and the teachers about social media use as well cyberbullying. The highlight of the article is regarding adversarial peer relations online and school’s bullying policy combats cyberbullying. There are two vital fields for Australian youth which are the school and social media available online. The author interprets the data in the article by using Bourdieu’s Theory consisting productive notions of field, social capital and cultural capital. As for the background overview, the author explained the common terms used in the article which are bullying, cyberbullying, young people and new media.

Discussion

According to Ringrose (2008), bullying is an act of behavior to harm another human being repeatedly with intention where the victim will face difficulties to defend himself or herself. On the other hand, cyberbullying is defined as an aggressive act or behavior online by using electronic medium against a certain group or an individual repeatedly across the time (Smith, 2012). The author recognized several characteristics that distinguish cyberbullying and offline bullying which are technological expertise, possibility to remain status as anonymous, relative distance, the complexity of bystander role, indirect provident of status gained and struggles to escape from harassment. Price & Dalgleish (2010) exaggerated the impact of cyberbullying were invasion of private domain of an individual. Other negative consequences are through offline environment; receiving mean and distressing personal attacks, public shaming and humiliation as well on online environment; hacking an individual accounts and device, impersonation and feeling stress to respond hatred remarks posted to their social media account. The author also cited Weinstein and Selman (2014) that stated the act of meanness and cruelty such as online impersonation, personal attacks, public shaming and humiliation are migrating to digital platform. It was found that digital gadgets gave both positive and negative implications in the context of communication to the teenagers, depending on the usage of gadgets within themselves. Based on a study conducted by Patchin and Hinduja (2006), they found that young people aged under 18 years old was reported having experience being disregarded, insulted, mockery, threatened, pestered, teased, and having bad rumors spread about them. The author inferred that technology affordance enhance the tendency of continuous, personal suffering due to cyberbullying.

Referring to the prior study by Tapscott (1998), he found that technology has influenced the way of young people thinking. On the other hand, Buckingham (2013) mentioned that the digital generation nowadays is the young people and his view on the situation contradicts Tapscott’s view as he opposed that the technological concept is diffused in the new media is an augmentation of face-to-face social interactions. Online technologies often depend on the setting of public and privacy boundaries. Thus, personal secret posted online may become widespread to a massive crowd for their source of hilarity to crease up at other people insecurities. Peer dispute that occurs online can lead to physical fights in the schoolyard. The author found that young people valued their friendship in the virtual life, hence the saying by Livingstone (2008) goes by “Friendship has always been made, displayed and broken”. In the relative perspective of offline peer social status, there are two status in the context of friendship; winner and loser. The offline peer interaction can erupt to cyberbully due to misusing opportunity of being close to a peer and portraying relational unfriendliness.

Pertaining to schools dealing with cyberbullying, Erdur-Baker (2010) highlighted that the activities of peer bullying is beyond the perimeter of schools. The main issue by the school in curbing cyberbullying appears from traditional belief on what cause the bullying to occur. Slonje, Smith & Frisen (2013) identified two criteria in standard definition of bullying that fumble with cyberbullying which are repetition and power imbalance. The author cited a source from Vandebosch & Van Cleemput (2009) that claimed repetition norm is vital in the case of cyberbullying due to constant nature of certain medium of electronic communication. In terms of power imbalance, the physical strength and age has become the measurement especially among boys. But, cyberbullying does not often associate with physical coercion. The act might not occur online but the threats to do so may come along.

In the aspect of gender differences, the author has made an initiative to engage with both male and female by conducting discussion among teachers and young people. In regards with uncertain finding for both genders, the author has found out that gender dissimilarity was not a major cause for each gender to be the bully or the victims. There are various responses received pertaining to the study. A school teacher stated that cyberbullying is usually something girls did. This statement is similar to an empirical study by Slonje et al. , (2013) that identified girls cyberbully more than boys did. Meanwhile, results of an observation study informed that boys are more involved in bullying which the victims are among girls (Li, 2006) that the view is completely against study reports produced by Erdur-Baker (2010) that claimed boys cyberbully radically more than girls. Hence, it is obvious that gender differences do not permit the capability for an individual to be involved in bullying and cyberbullying. In addition, countenance and consequences of bullying are resolve differently by male and female (Ringrose, 2008). Referring to findings by Hutzell & Payne (2012), the author mentioned that bullying among boys usually includes upholding masculinity that exerts through physical assault. Contradictory to female, they usually use secretive and discriminatory approach to proclaim dominance over female peers. Another additional approach of girl’s bullying is by spreading gossips and slanders, fat-shaming and the most worrying matters closely related to their behavior is “bitchiness” that is an act of sustaining power and status by using malevolence that can be defined as being hateful or nasty that purposely to cause emotional harm.

Framework of analysis

In the framework of analysis, the author used theory by Bourdieu’s Field and Forms of Capital. The forms of capital can be divided into two which are social capital and cultural capital. Bourdieu’s concept about fields is defined as an accumulation of system, rules, categories, arrangements and positions that when all is combined will establish an objective hierarchy. To simplify the meaning, fields are where the occurrence of problems take place, or it is a site of struggle. In the context of young people and cyberbullying, cyberspace and school are the “fields” because it is where the act of bully done either through online or physically conducted. Other than that, social capital is the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less established relationships of mutual acquittance and recognition (Bourdieu, 1986). The author comprehends social capital addressed the linking connections between individuals that exist and maintain mutual understanding within the fields of cyberspace and schools. Thus, individuals that are appreciated, admired and reputable than others gain more amount of social capitals or followers. It is closely associated with trust, confidentiality and loyalty highly valued. On the other hand, culture capital is a knowledge pertaining to a right social insight, desires and fashion sense that regard to a privileged cultural position in the fields. For instance, a teenager with low knowledge of cultural capital relating to social media may unaware of setting of the application or completely clueless on how it works. Due to lack of cultural capital, the teenager is being mocked, teased and labelled with names by the individual with high social capital.

Methodology

The methodology for the topic cyberbullying within young people at school and their emotional comfort is a qualitative research approach was used to enable real-time interaction or face-to-face explanation. The method conducted was a semi-structured interview. Before the actual interview is carried out, a draft of interview was piloted to test the effectiveness of the method. The outcome of the draft interview was reviewed, and improvement of questions was inserted to the list of question relating to the experience and the sequence of questions will be asked. The first question during interview is interviewee is asked about their definition of bullying and cyberbullying. The question was followed with have they witness the situation before and lastly pertaining to their personal experience and involvement if they have ever been bullied or become a bully. The demographic scope of interview was a total of 10 students with an equivalent proportion of gender respectively aged 15-18 years old and also participation from a male and female teacher to generate opinion from educational perspective. The location of interview conducted was at an undisclosed Catholic High School situated in urban area of New South Wales, Australia.

Findings

Since it was a qualitative research, the responses received from the interviewees varied from one and another. Several samples of results on every question is collected in the research. The findings pertaining to the definition of bullying and cyberbullying is explained and summarized by the author. Key agents include the pupils who bully, victim and teachers who try to break it off. Relating to the Bourdieu’s theory, the struggle in order for the capital is started in attempts to maintain social and cultural capital by practicing bullying unknowingly. As for the victim, the obstacle is to survive in the social stakes while accumulating as much social and cultural capital to tackle the negative impacts. A female student inferred bullying as making somebody else feel worst and putting themselves down which can cause self-hatred that can occurs once or repeatedly to a victim from the same or different people. Meanwhile, definition of bully according to School X is a repeated behavior by a more powerful person or group that the act may intend or unintendedly to hurt, injure, embarrass, or torture a weaker person that can come in form of physical, verbal, physiological or social. The interviewees point of view about cyberbullying is approximately linked with face-to-face bullying. A male student explained the act by using the concept “comfort zone” which is the personal space that is invaded by the bully. The male student statement coherently supports the findings by Wegge, Vandebosh and Eggermont (2014) regarding to contemporary school bullying. The presence of social media can induce peer infuriate by refuting harassment replies between the field school and the field of the online peer platform. One of the student interviewees repeatedly claimed that cyberbullying is worse than face-to-face bullying because other people can get involve and cause the social media platform of the victim be at risk and cause the victim to do something bad to themselves. Majority of the students as well the teachers agreed that cyberbullying cause so much negative effects because it can affect the victim to live in fear and distress.

Recommendation

The subject of cyberbullying is currently identified as a subset under bullying in the school of conducted study. It is recommended for the subject cyberbullying to be under its own limelight as a particular form of harassment with different possible capabilities and potential to affect the student among young people in Australia. The author also suggested for the students and teachers to equipped themselves with guidance pertaining to report and encounter the issues of cyberbullying. Besides that, the creation of discussion session during existing personal development classes on cyberbullying that emphasis on social capital and symbolic violence should be introduce in school for exposure especially among the students.

Conclusion

It can be recapitulated from the article that cyberbullying has the possibility to affect the student’s safety because according to a quote by Tokunaga (2010), “it follows you home from school”. This statement is in conjunction with findings by Papacharissi (2014) that stated online technologies can breakdown public and private domains. Besides, school authority plays an important element in dealing with parts attached to cyberbullying such as spreadability, deniability, anonymity and permanence. The social media troopers of cyberbullying facilitated their escaping of bullying penalties at school and they avoided responsibility upon their online action at ease. Matter that has become concern faced among the victims is the fact that students preferred to hide their tormenting social network woes away from adults. In my opinion, it is a worrying issue because the side effect could affect the victim physically and emotionally. The victim could expose themselves to self-harm and suicide due to peer pressure issues.

Meanwhile, their emotional thoughts are unstable due to mental distortion they faced online on the social media platform. If their judgement is clouded with depressing and suicidal thought, they could live in poor state of mental health that will turnover their life. In my personal opinion about this article, it is well written by the author which give a beneficial output for the readers. There was sufficient amount of citation and source used by the author to support the study. The article is comprehensive with packed examples and explanation about what cyberbullying and bullying are all about. It gave the readers an insight of the situation of the matters discussed by the author. For improvement purposes, it is suggested for the author to differentiate the topic and subtopic of the article for clear understanding for novice researchers.