Submitted by: Submitted by ayu5
Views: 477
Words: 1879
Pages: 8
Category: Societal Issues
Date Submitted: 04/10/2012 10:51 AM
The last decade has brought forth an extensive amount of development in the field of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) (Sahin, 2012). The explosion of ICT has many potential benefits including but not limited to increased efficiency in social networking, communications and information management and the increased opportunity for learning. Unfortunately, it is also this new technology that brings forth a new means of violence, known as cyber bullying, that has the potential to be more dangerous than its predecessor form of traditional bullying.
Bullying has always been a predicament faced by the adolescent age group. With the turn of the century, emerges a new form of bullying, known as cyber bullying. Cyber bullying is defined as a deliberate, repetitive and harmful (Baker & Tanrikulu, 2010) delivery of violence and insults via the virtual environment (Sahin, 2012). As such, cyber bullying is also known as electronic bullying or online social cruelty (Mishna, Saini, & Solomon, 2009). Activities defined as cyber bullying includes but are not limited to online harrassment, outing and exclusion, distibuting of unsolicited text or photos of a sexual nature (Mishna, Khoury-Kassabri, Gadalla, & Daciuk, 2011), ridiculing, denigration, masquerading or impersonation, and deflaming (posting of deragortory remarks) (Sahin, 2012). It is assumed that reasons for and effects of cyber bullying are nearly parallel to that of the traditional bullying (Law, Shapka, Hymel, Olson, & Waterhouse, 2011). However, cyber bullying’s distinction may pose a much greater threat than that of traditional bullying because cyberspace is “quicker, more comprehensive, and almost unstoppable and unavoidable” (Ozdamli, Hursen, & Ercag, 2011).
One distinction is in the method of delivery made through the use of an electronic medium (Mishna et al., 2009). The rapid development of information and communication technology has enabled a wide selection of delivery...