Is Cyberbullying Worse than Traditional Bullying? Examining the Differential Roles of Medium, Publicity, and Anonymity for the Perceived Severity of Bullying

Abstract

Cyberbullying, a modern form of bullying performed using electronic forms of contact (e.g., SMS, MMS, Facebook, YouTube), has been considered as being worse than traditional bullying in its consequences for the victim. This difference was mainly attributed to some specific aspect that are believed to distinguish cyberbully-ing from traditional bullying: an increased potential for a large audience, an increased potential for anonymous bul-lying, lower levels of direct feedback, decreased time and space limits, and lower levels of supervision. The present studies investigated the relative importance of medium (traditional vs. cyber), publicity (public vs. private), and bully's anonymity (anonymous vs. not anonymous) for the perceived severity of hypothetical bullying scenarios among a sample of Swiss seventh-and eight-graders (study 1: 49 % female, mean age = 13.7; study 2: 49 % female, mean age = 14.2). Participants ranked a set of hypothetical bullying scenarios from the most severe one to the least severe one. The scenarios were experimentally manipulated based on the aspect of medium and publicity (study 1), and medium and anonymity (study 2). Results showed that public scenarios were perceived as worse than private ones, and that anonymous scenarios were perceived as worse than not anonymous ones. Cyber scenarios generally were perceived as worse than traditional ones, although effect sizes were found to be small. These results suggest that the role of medium is secondary to the role of publicity and anonymity when it comes to evaluating bullying severity. Therefore, cyberbullying is not a priori perceived as worse than traditional bullying. Implications of the results for cyberbullying prevention and intervention are discussed. Cyberbullying, a modern form of bullying performed using electronic forms of contact (e.g., SMS, MMS, Facebook, YouTube), has been considered as being worse than traditional bullying in its consequences for the victim. This difference is mainly attributed to some specific aspect that are believed to distinguish cyberbullying from traditional bullying: an increased potential for a large audience, an increased potential for anonymous bullying, lower levels of direct feedback, decreased time and space limits, and lower levels of supervision.The present studies investigated the relative importance of medium (traditional vs. cyber), publicity (public vs. private), and bully's anonymity (anonymous vs. not anonymous) for the perceived severity of hypothetical bullying scenarios among a sample of Swiss seventh-and eight-graders (study 1: 49% female, mean age = 13.7; study 2: 49% female, mean age = 14.2).Participants ranked a set of hypothetical bullying scenarios from the most severe one to the least severe one. The scenarios were experimentally manipulated based on the aspect of medium and publicity (study 1), and medium and anonymity (study 2). Results showed that public scenarios were perceived as worse than private ones, and that anonymous scenarios were perceived as worse than ...

No laughing matter: How the presence of laughing witnesses changes the perception of insults.

“…As such, the direct integration of publicity and laughter with insult perception could have both short-and longterm effects on emotional well-being. The current experiment could also explain why cyberbullying has such far-reaching effects on its victims (Kowalski, Giumetti, Schroeder, & Lattanner, 2014;Sticca & Perren, 2013;Tokunaga, 2010). Even though cyberbullying often takes place without any direct witnesses, the Internet has a long memory and an almost unlimited potential for others to witness the humiliation of the bullied person at a later point in time.…”

“…There is a diverse body of evidence suggesting that negative social interactions are experienced more intensely when they take place publicly. Studies of bullying, for example, show that bullying has more detrimental effects when the bully acts in front of peers, compared to when the bully and the victim are alone (Pellegrini, Bartini, & Brooks, 1999;Sticca & Perren, 2013). This is also the case when the onlookers do not take part in the bullying (Sticca & Perren, 2013), which indicates that the publicity itself is the exacerbating factor.…”

Victims of Cyberbullying in the Region of Murcia: A Quantitative Study with High School Students

“…The increasing phe ment occurred mainly at school, today the use of ICT means that children now have no place to "hide" from this problem (Slonje & Smith, 2008). This and other features, like anonymity (Sticca & Perren, 2012), have led many people to believe that this problem is more serious than traditional bullying. The situation is further aggravated by the mass media.…”

“…There is a clear discrepancy between cyberbullying, considered a specific type of bullying (Del Rey, Elipe, & Ortega, 2012;Waasdorp & Bradshaw, 2015) or identifying it as a new construct with its own characteristics (Álvarez-García et al, 2011;Kubiszewski, Fontaine, Potard, & Auzoult, 2015). Although cyberbullying shares some features with traditional bullying, such as power imbalance and intentionality, there are noteworthy distinguishing features: anonymity (Lapidot-Lefler & Barak, 2012;Moore, Nakano, Enomoto, & Suda, 2012), the disinhibitory effect of the Internet (Casale, Fiovaranti, & Caplan, 2015), the size of the audience (Sticca & Perren, 2012) and repetition (Ybarra, Espelage, & Mitchell, 2014).…”

Emerging Scholar Best Article Award, 2014

“…Others focused on emotional and behavioral problems (Telzer and Fuligni 2013;Georgiades et al 2013), while others studied teen dating violence (Temple, et al 2013) and other aspects of peer relationships' effects (Taylor et al 2013;Marion et al 2013). Yet others centered on the role of media in adolescent development, such as the relative effects of cyberbullying (Sticca and Perren 2013) and the positive effects of video game use (Adachi and Willoughby 2013). As in the past, most finalists adopted longitudinal approaches, complex research designs, and innovative statistical analyses to understand developmental issues.…”