Friendship Qualities and Cyberbullying

Sarah G

EME 2040- 003

Dr. James Hatten

October 2^nd, 2018

 

Annotation #5

Cyberbullying in Hong Kong Chinese students: Life satisfaction, and the moderating role of friendship qualities on cyberbullying victimization and perpetration.

Source Reference

Leung, A. N. M., Wong, N., & Farver, J. M. (2018). Cyberbullying in Hong Kong Chinese students: Life satisfaction, and the moderating role of friendship qualities on cyberbullying victimization and perpetration. Personality & Individual Differences, 133, 7–12. https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.usf.edu/10.1016/j.paid.2017.07.016

 

Article Type

Article from Personality & Individual Differences (Volume 133).

 

First Citation

“ “ (Leung 2018).

 

Brief Summary

Angel Leung discusses the correlation between friendship qualities and cyberbullying in the article. Information is given in the form of studies and concluding results to confirm the data that has been collected. In this article, cyberbullying was also compared to the broad sense of the term bullying.

 

Summary

One of the significant discoveries made in this cyberbullying study in Hong Kong was that the majority of those who have participated in cyberbullying have been males. While this fact was not different from their prominence in other forms of bullying, the author did emphasize the oddity of this statistic considering cyberbullies can hide behind a screen and therefore this statistic is not well known.

Another important point made by Leung was that many cyberbullies hide behind the pretense of being the victims’ friend in order to get close to them. While this is true it is also true for cyberbullies to commit the act of cyberbullying because of the peer rejection they face on a day to day basis. The reasoning behind this statistic is because males tend to have different reactive aggressions than females.

Social status is irrelevant in the world of social media and cyberbullying, regardless of what class a person belongs to, they can be a victim of cyberbullying. Another negative side this is that social media provides cyberbullies with a large pool of opportunity to gain support in their cyberbullying efforts.

 

Significant Quotes

• It was discovered that cyberbullying typically is committed by those who have experienced cyberbullying themselves. This cycle of negativity is perpetual.

“Similar to previous studies, cyberbullying victimization was strongly correlated with cyberbullying perpetration. These results indicate that the co-occurrence of perpetration and victimization is robust in the cyberspace” (Leung 2018).

• Cyberbullying varies from other forms of bullying because it is more public but also more anonymous.

“In traditional bullying, victims tend not to perpetrate bullying because of power imbalances (e.g., Slonje, Smith, & Frisén, 2013). Victims are typically at a lower social standing… Therefore, the act of retaliating would expose them to a great danger but with small effect. However, in the cyber context, due to the unique characteristics of cyber-communication which includes delayed feedback, anonymity, and a lower risk to be confronted with the reactions or consequences of bullying others, the perceived risk for the cyberbullied-victims to retaliate online is much lower” (Leung 2018).

• Cyberbullying can be more impactful than regular bullying because of the ability to easily gather other people to attack others on a social forum.

“Instead, internet literacy and related expertise seem to contribute to the power imbalance found in cyberspace (e.g., Vandebosch and Van Cleemput, 2008, Ybarra and Mitchell, 2004). In the cyber community, if individuals can find alliances and form groups to purposefully cyberbully others, they can achieve the power imbalance needed for bullying” (Leung 2018).

 

Evaluation

Strengths: This article was well researched and seemed to reveal many unknown facts to me about cyberbullying

Weaknesses: The problem with this article was the format of the data. Many of the statistical findings were detailed in a graph or chart rather than verbal form making it difficult for the reader to incorporate intro research