An Exchange of Thoughts and Supports on the Topic of Cyber Bullying

An Exchange of Thoughts and Supports on the Topic of Cyber Bullying

About the project

Europe has become more cosmopolitan due to constant migration within the borders of a country or from abroad for many reasons. People sometimes get false opinion of certain people or groups from unchecked media tools, and they tend to commit hate crimes or bias/hate incidents. When prejudicemotivated adults raise children, they inevitably turn into harsh bullies who cause discomfort and injury to their peers just because they belong to different ethnicity, language, race, nationality, religion, physical appearance, gender identity or sexual orientation.

From another side there are a lot of activities focusing on campaigning and raising awareness for the problem of hate and bullying, but there is not a lot of competent educators and youth workers who deal with youth who was already a victim of hate and bullying. With this project we wanted to address this need and build up competences for youth workers and educators to be able to provide the psychological support and empower youngsters to empower them re-integrate actively in the society.

What encouraged us to come up with another original project about bullying is that as long as the problem seems unsolved it means there is not enough research done nor any effective projects to promote anti-bullying well enough. With a more developed perspective on the matter, we hope to deploy activities and raise awareness to fight with every rampant form of bullying through our project.

The aim of the project was to equip youth workers and educators with a set of competences to provide support and work with young people who have faced hate and bullying for their empowerment and re-integration as active stakeholders in the fight against for human rights, tolerance and understanding.

The main objectives were:

• To provide space for youth workers and educators to share practices for working with young people who have faced stress, bullying and hate

• To explore different competences and theories for empowerment and re-integration of young people who have been targets/victims of hate and bullying

• To train educators and youth workers to take an active role in working with, and empowering young people who have been targets/victims of hate and bullying The main outcome of the project is the compendium of good practices in front of you.

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Introduction

A training course on the topic of cyberbullying in Armenia took place on the 18th to the 25th of May with young people from a number of different countries across Europe. The training course focused on introducing the group to the topic of bullying, cyberbullying and came up with ways in which they could tackle/ change cyber bullies in their realities. Like many, the participants found the topic challenging as there are many ways to view cyber bullies and the fact that cyber bullying is such a new concept.

The topic of bullying is not a new one, since the beginning of time bullying has existed. People have used it to show their superiority, to hide their lack of confidence or to hurt someone who is different from themselves. There are many reasons why people have bullied and there is an infinite number of ways in which a person can bully. Since the emergence of the internet, bullying has found a new home. Cyber bullying emerged and has grown a huge amount, largely unchecked over the last decade.

Cyber Bullying is anything offensive, humiliating, threatening or abusive that is directed at you in an electronic form of communication. This includes: text, email, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, instant messaging, and online games, etc.

Examples of cyberbullying include: - Nasty messages online or on the mobile phone; - Comments on your posts or posts about you; - Being excluded from online groups and forums; - Embarrassing photos being put online without your permission; - Rumours and lies about you on a website; - Offensive chat on online gaming; - Fake online profiles being created with an intent to defame you.

This compendium focuses on the psychology behind (cyber) bullying, explore some case studies that look into the world of cyber bullies, and also looks at strategies that can be used to manage certain styles of cyber bullies. It proposes some methods of empowerment and resources that can be used to further the discussion and knowledge of the topic of cyber bullying.

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Why Do Cyber Bullies, Bully?

A study done by Slonje et al. 2013 found that individuals who are cyber bullying are often victims of bullying themselves. Unable to retaliate face to face, they turn to cyber bullying where they can hide behind a veil of anonymity and feel protected. Another study by Varjas et al. 2010, found that motives were classified as either external or internal for a high school cohort contributing to cyber bullying.

Internal motives were; - Revenge - Boredom - Jealousy - Trying out a new persona - Redirecting feelings.

External motives were classified as; - No consequences - Non-confrontational - The target was different in some way such as appearance.

It was found that internal motivations tended to predict cyberbullying more than external. Studies have also demonstrated that individuals who are cyberbullying are more likely, than traditional bullying, to continue their bullying for extended periods of time, mostly due to the lack of feedback from actually being in the presence of the victim.

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