Cyberbullying legislation: The role of cyberbullying law

Abstract

Faced with the increasing number of cases of cyberbullying and its consequences, states are trying to find the best way of its sanctioning. The latest tragic event, in which a young man from Republika Srpska committed suicide because he was mocked on one of the social networks, has triggered a public debate on whether cyberbullying is adequately sanctioned in our country. Based on the way individual countries sanction cyberbullying, we can divide them into two groups. The first group includes those countries that sanction cyberbullying through the application of one of the existing criminal offenses (insult, defamation, persecution, unauthorised filming, hate speech). The second one refers to those countries where cyberbullying has been treated as a special criminal offense. The aim of this paper is to make suggestions for possible changes, based on an analysis of the existing legislation on cyberbullying in our country as well as in some European countries, in order to protect the victims of cyberbullying more effectively. In the paper, the authors have used a normative-legal method for the analysis of legal regulations including a comparative method for a comparative presentation of a legal regulation of cyberbullying in other countries. On the grounds of the analysis conducted, there is a conclusion that a legal protection against digital violence in our country does not provide adequate remedies for the victims of cyberbullying.