Speakers
Description
Cyberbullying, a major issue among teenagers, involves online violence repeated or sustained over time toward a victim who cannot easily defend him or herself (Smith et al., 2008). It is a hybrid social phenomenon with different bystander’s roles (Salmivalli, 2010). Defenders are crucial supporting victims (Sarmiento et al., 2019), but most research have focused on victim’s coping strategies (Slonje et al., 2013).
Methodology
This study uses qualitative methods to identify and understand the upstander actions in cyberbullying. Conducted with 25 Spanish youth (13 girls) aged 12-16 years, the study involves 3 focus groups and 6 communicative daily life stories.
Results
The findings present upstander strategies from each category of the 5 Ds model in the context of cyberbullying: Direct, Distract, Delegate, Document and Delay. Some of them are novel or contribute nuances to the existing. For instance: limiting the interactions within WhatsApp groups (Direct), trying other people don’t share the content of aggression (Distract), empowering victims to report themself (Delegate), making explicit and public the suffering of the victim (Document) and creating online supporting groups (Delay). However, there are missing strategies to support the upstanders.
Conclusion
To overcome some of the barriers that upstanders face, such as fear of retaliation, we identify the need for actions to support the upstanders. The 6 Ds model includes a new category of upstander actions to “Defend” the defenders, thus widening the existing 3 Ds from Green Dot Project (Coker et al., 2017) and the 5 Ds model from the NGO Right to be.
Keywords
Bystander, Upstander, Cyberbullying, Strategies
| Please indicate what type of scientific contribution it is | Qualitative method study |
|---|---|
| Please also indicate what kind of contribution it is: | Scientific |
