Bullying discussions in UK female influencers’ YouTube comments

ABSTRACT

Victims of bullying are often reluctant to seek formal support, and instead, internalise their emotions, hindering recovery. Some will subsequently encounter discussions of bullying online, giving them an unexpected opportunity to share their feelings or experience vicarious support. In this article, we investigate reactions to discussions of offline and online bullying in the comments posted to the YouTube channels of 34 popular UK female lifestyle influencers. We used a thematic analysis of keywords associated with comments mentioning bullying to identify bullying-related themes. The almost universally supportive comments position female YouTube influencer channels as sources of unexpected indirect support for victims that professionals may also recommend. The comments also reveal a previously undiscussed strategy for helping victims: abstraction.

KEYWORDS:

• Bullying
• YouTube
• Influencers
• Victim support
• Cyberbullying

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mike Thelwall

Mike Thelwall leads the Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. Professor Thelwall’s areas of research expertise include sentiment analysis and social science research methods for the social web. He is the author of the Mozdeh social media data analysis software and the book, Word Association Thematic Analysis: A Social Media Text Exploration Strategy (Morgan & Claypool, 2021).

Scottye Cash

Scottye J. Cash, MSSW, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Social Work at the Ohio State University, USA. Dr. Cash’s expertise has focused on assessment and targeted service delivery for at-risk children and families. She has been a Co-Principal Investigator on a federally-funded grant to develop, implement, and evaluate a children’s mental health training program for social work students pursuing a career in child welfare.