‘Wicked’, ‘deceptive’, and ‘blood sucking’: Cyberbullying against social workers in Israel as claims-making activity

Abstract

This study analyses verbal aggression in cyberbullying against social workers in Israel. Given the particular nature of this type of aggressive behaviour, namely its repeated and public dimensions, the study focuses on the content of offensive messages. Drawing on examples from multiple antisocial workers' weblogs and Facebook pages, the study employs constructionist social problems methodology in order to extract the logical structure of antisocial workers' discourse as claims-making activity. The analysis demonstrates that, far from constituting isolated or momentary outbursts of anger or frustration, cyberbullying against social workers contains messages which share similarities in content and style, comprise a persistent set of claims against social workers and employ rhetorical means in order to enhance public support. The article holds that understanding the specificity and content of offensive messages against social workers in new-media saturated societies is crucial for understanding current shifts in social workers' conflict environment and the formation of public opinion concerning social workers and social services.

A Context‐Informed Perspective of Child Risk and Protection: Deconstructing Myths in the Risk Discourse

“…This causes anxiety for professionals and services and leads them to search for tools, such as assessment protocols, risk indicators, scales, to reduce this anxiety and feel more confident in taking action (Smeeton, 2020). Moreover, in recent years, we have witnessed a growing trend of the personal shaming of social workers and child protection officers, especially on weblogs and Facebook pages, for their child protection decisions (Kagan et al, 2018). We believe this trend has intensified the anxiety of dealing with the issue of children at risk and the professionals' search for evidence.…”

Ethical decision-making in internet research – Investigating protest groups against Child Welfare Services on Facebook

“…Kagan et al. (2017) considered this kind of social media arenas to be public and group administrators to be publicly known.…”

“…Thus, even if the selected groups give off the impression that they are created to reach out to a greater audience, there are some posts that include both a public message with personal experience, and also other postings that are sensitive and private and should not be reproduced in any publication without careful anonymization. Kagan et al (2017) considered this kind of social media arenas to be public and group administrators to be publicly known. Trevisan and Reilly considered their groups to be semi-public, but still found covert observation and data collection to be ethically safe.…”

“…A recent Israeli study of cyberbullying against social workers used material from weblogs, YouTube channels and Facebook pages (Kagan et al., 2017). They considered the administrators’ identity to be public and did not refrain from mentioning their names.…”

Resistance and protest against Norwegian Child Welfare Services on Facebook - different perceptions of child-centring

“…One exception is a recent Israeli study about verbal aggression in cyberbullying against social workers (Kagan, Orkibi and Zychlinski 2017). This study focuses on the content of the offensive messages, and because the study includes child welfare issues, I will comment on some of the findings in the conclusion.…”