Speaker
Description
Cyberbullying is a significant issue among higher education students, with a recent report showing that 18.4% of students in Ireland experienced negative acts, including bullying online and offline over the last academic year (Goldrick et al., 2023). However, there is a limited research focusing specifically on the process (e.g., what language was used, time of the day or the frequency of the incidents occurred online) of cyberbullying, experiences of bystanders who witness them and the mental health impacts on both victims and bystanders.
The current study addresses these gaps by exploring the nature, language, frequency, and context of cyberbullying incidents and their impacts on students’ mental health. This study, therefore, serves as the first primary investigation into these aspects within the Irish higher education system.
Using a quantitative approach, an anonymous online survey will be conducted among higher education students aged from 18 to 25 years. Descriptive and inferential statistics will be performed in IBM SPSS (30.0.0) to understand the demographic information, experiences of cyberbullying faced by higher education students, and relationships between cyberbullying experiences and mental health outcomes.
The findings will allow us to better understand students' experiences of severity, prevalence and specific language patterns used by the target population. It will be essential for building intervention programs and training initiatives that will aid both victims and the bystanders impacted by cyberbullying experiences. The study will also support development of datasets for providing language markers for cyberbullying.
Keywords
cyberbullying, victims, bystanders, mental health, Irish higher education,
| Please indicate what type of scientific contribution it is | Quantitative method study |
|---|---|
| Please also indicate what kind of contribution it is: | Scientific |
