Cyberbullying: An Exploratory Analysis of Factors Related to Offending and Victimization

Abstract

Victimization on the Internet through what has been termed cyberbullying has attracted increased attention from scholars and practitioners. Defined as “willful and repeated harm inflicted through the medium of electronic text” (Patchin and Hinduja 2006:152), this negative experience not only undermines a youth's freedom to use and explore valuable on-line resources, but also can result in severe functional and physical ramifications. Research involving the specific phenomenon—as well as Internet harassment in general—is still in its infancy, and the current work seeks to serve as a foundational piece in understanding its substance and salience. On-line survey data from 1,378 adolescent Internet-users are analyzed for the purposes of identifying characteristics of typical cyberbullying victims and offenders. Although gender and race did not significantly differentiate respondent victimization or offending, computer proficiency and time spent on-line were positively related to both cyberbullying victimization and offending. Additionally, cyberbullying experiences were also linked to respondents who reported school problems (including traditional bullying), assaultive behavior, and substance use. Implications for addressing this novel form of youthful deviance are discussed.

An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2005 meetings of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences in Chicago, IL. This study was supported by funding from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Faculty/Student Research Collaboration Differential Tuition Grants Program and a Florida Atlantic University Division of Research and Graduate Studies summer research stipend. The authors thank the Editor and anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

¹Some of the quotes used in the article have been edited for spelling and distracting grammatical errors. The substance of the quotes, however, has not changed.

²Nansel et al. (2001) define bullying as aggressive behavior or intentional “harm doing” by one person or a group, generally carried out repeatedly and over time, and that involves a power differential.

³Exceptions include Berson, Berson, and Ferron (2002), Hinduja and Patchin (2007); Li (2006), Patchin and Hinduja (2006), and Ybarra and Mitchell (2004).

⁴To note, the reasons for nonreporting mirror those found among populations of child abuse victims (Berlinger and Barbieri 1984; Swanson and Biaggio 1985).

⁵This was defined as “being hit or picked on by another child during the previous year” (Ybarra and Mitchell 2004:1310).

⁶These included purposefully damaging property, police contact, physically assaulting a non-family member, and taking something that did not belong to the respondent within the previous year (Ybarra and Mitchell 2004:1310).

⁷According to the U.S. Department of Justice, cyberstalking can be defined as “the use of the Internet, e-mail, or other electronic communications devices to stalk another person” (Reno 1999). Generally speaking, most stalking laws involve direct or indirect threats against the victim or his or her immediate family.

⁸For brevity, much of the specific details of the on-line methodology employed have been removed. For more information about how the data were collected, please contact the first author.

⁹Seven websites agreed to link to our survey, and included three on-line gaming sites, three musical artist homepages, and a Harry Potter site.

¹⁰Although there is no consistent finding in the literature base, some research involving self-reported delinquent behavior has indicated that girls are more likely to respond to Web surveys than boys (McCabe, Boyd, Couper, Crawford, and D'Arcy 2002). To be sure, more inquiry is necessary regarding gender differences in response rates for Web-based surveys of deviance.

¹¹As expected, there were no statistically significant differences between those female youth who were included and those who were excluded from analysis.

¹²It is possible that the other acts of relational aggression may be very detrimental, especially if they occur with frequency. For the purposes of this analyses, though, we have chosen to label as “serious” those acts that appear to evoke a greater level of personal fear among respondents—threatening physical harm and making others scared for their safety.

¹³An exception to this is found in Rigby (2003) and the phenomenon of “relational bullying,” which is more common among older students than younger and involves damage done to the victim's relationship with peers.

¹⁴On-line activities included: e-mail or chat/IRC; research for school work; file transfer; using the newsgroups; product and travel information; on-line shopping; on-line auctions; on-line games; on-line stock trading; on-line banking; to collect information related to news, sports, or the weather; to collect information related to personal interests and hobbies; and Web design.

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¹⁵Overall, research on gender and racial differences among traditional crimes is arguably inconclusive. Racial disparity can be explained away with differential arrest rates (Huizinga and Elliott 1987; Sealock and Simpson 1998; Tracy 1987) and socioeconomic factors, and gender disparity may be an artifact of hesitance on the part of criminal justice authorities to take action against women (Decker, Wright, Redfern, and Smith 1993; Pollack 1950; Steffensmeier 1980). Although future research is clearly required on crimes in both real space and cyberspace, the findings from the current study suggest that some forms of deviance do not neatly fall along certain demographic lines.