Denis Wegge

Popularity Through Online Harm The Longitudinal Associations Between Cyberbullying and Sociometric Status in Early Adolescence

The present study examines the reciprocal associations between cyberbullying behavior and young adolescents’ social status. For this purpose, a two-wave panel study with an 8-month time interval was conducted among an entire grade of 154 secondary school pupils (age 12-14). The survey featured items on traditional bullying and cyberbullying as well as peer-nomination questions on sociometric and perceived popularity. Cyberbullying was related to subsequent increases in perceived popularity of the perpetrators. In contrast, traditional bullying perpetration was not longitudinally associated with social status during the studied period. Although perceived popularity was also expected to precede cyberbullying behavior, this was not observed. Taken together, the results suggest that electronic forms of bullying, rather than traditional forms, can provide a means to acquire additional perceived popularity in early adolescence. The findings warrant future research on the factors that moderate the association between cyberbullying and social status.

Who bullies whom online: A social network analysis of cyberbullying in a school context

Abstract Young adolescents’ online bullying behavior has raised a significant amount of academic attention. Nevertheless, little is known about the social context in which such negative actions occur. The present paper addresses this issue and examines how the patterns of traditional bullying and cyberbullying are related, and how electronic forms of bullying can be linked to the social context at school. To address these questions, social network analysis was applied to examine the networks of social interactions and (cyber)bullying among an entire grade of 1,458 thirteen- to fourteen-year-old pupils. The results show that (1) cyberbullying is an extension of traditional bullying as victims often face the same perpetrators offline and online, (2) there is evidence of mutual cyberbullying among youngsters, and (3) cyberbullying is more likely to occur in same-gender and same-class students. The implications for future research and prevention of cyberbullying are discussed.

The Strong, the Weak, and the Unbalanced: The Link Between Tie Strength and Cyberaggression on a Social Network Site

The subject of this research is hurtful behavior on social network sites. Specifically, the study examines how young people’s connections on such sites are related to their risk of being involved in cyberharassment and cyberbullying. For this purpose, eighth-grade students from 11 secondary schools were surveyed (n = 1,458). The students indicated who their friends were at school and with whom they were connected on Facebook. The results demonstrate that victimization and perpetration are linked to the composition of one’s network of online connections. The presence of many connections with fellow students who are not friends elevates the risk of cyberharassment and cyberbullying. In addition, perpetrators and victims have a disproportionally high number of connections based on unbalanced, weak friendships. This lack of balance may indicate that perpetrators are higher in the hierarchy of social status and that victims are lower. The findings imply that adolescents may be able to avert online victimization by carefully selecting their online ties. Further implications for the prevention of harassment and bullying on social network sites as well as avenues for future research are discussed.

Cyberbullying-Entrenched or Cyberbully-Free Classrooms? A Class Network and Class Composition Approach

Cyberbullying threatens young peoples well-being. This study is one of the first to examine cyberbullying from a social network perspective. The class-based friendship networks of 103 classes were reconstructed using peer-nomination questionnaires. Closeness centralization and the global clustering coefficient were calculated using social network analysis and subsequently entered into a Poisson-regression. The outcomes of these analyses show that in classes featured by high closeness centralization in the offline and online friendship network, more cyberbullying happens. Additionally, our analyses reveal that in classes featuring a high global clustering coefficient in the online network, less cyberbullying occurs. The composition of the class in terms of gender and ethnicity were not significantly associated with the number of cyberbullying incidents in class.

Cyberbullying Research in Belgium: An Overview of Generated Insights and a Critical Assessment of the Mediation of Technology in a Web 2.0 World

As one of the most recent forms of peer aggression, cyberbullying has emerged in our communities as a societal problem affecting the mental health of contemporary youth. As the prefix “cyber-” suggests, this type of bullying occurs through the use of an electronic medium. Following some widely covered cases in media (e.g. The Megan Meier story, the Amanda Todd case), scholarly attention devoted to this topic has significantly increased during the past decade (Tokunaga, Computers in Human Behavior 26(3), 277–287, 2010). Also in Belgium, scholars have put their efforts together to gain a better understanding of cyberbullying. In this context, the research group Media, ICT/Interpersonal relations in Organisations and Society (MIOS) has adopted the role of a Belgian pioneer in studying this form of negative online conduct among youngsters on the Internet and via mobile devices. The first aim of the chapter is to provide an overview of the outcomes of these research efforts. Both the prevalence rates, observed across five large-scale studies conducted by MIOS on cyberbullying, and the predictors of victimization and perpetration identified in these studies will be discussed.