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1.6 Types of bullying and cyberbullying

Bullying

There are different ways of bullying. 

It may be physical, when it is carried out through physical aggression and abuse (hitting, kicking, shoving, hitting, pinching or assaulting with objects). But it may also refer to violence against things or property, through, for instance, taking objects, damaging them, or extorting money from the target. This is generally the easiest form to detect. 

However, it can also manifest itself in a verbal form, through insults, teasing, verbal aggression. It means mocking, repeatedly taunting the target, apostrophising them with humiliating nicknames, making comments about the way they dress or speak, making racial or sexist remarks. This form of violence repeated over time leads to a progressive and deleterious inner attrition in the target. But there is also indirect or psychological violence, which is mainly carried out through the spreading of slander, intentional exclusion, the spreading of annoying gossip or through threats, humiliation and mockery. Conversely, it is defined as relational when it involves isolating the target. Ignoring someone also falls under this form of bullying. This one in particular refers to a form of 'aggression' that manifests itself mainly in the form of 'sneaky gossip' and affects the female sex more than the male.

Cyberbullying 

The cyberbully can inflict immediate and long-term violence or psychological harm on his target in various ways: 

  • Cyberbashing

  • Harassment or Put Down

  • Denigration

  • Cyberstalking

  • Flaming

  • Impersonation

  • Exclusion

  • Outing or Trickery

  • Exposure

  • Sexting

  • Sextortion

CYBERBASHING

CYBERBASHING is the most frequent form of cyberbullying and is evidenced when a target is assaulted, hit or harassed while a group of bystanders film the scene with a phone camera and then disseminate the images and footage on the web. 

Digital prevarications are the order of the day and are used by CYP in order to humiliate, attack and denigrate others, many of which are unknown to most adults.

These are forms of violence, often acted out in group, in which physical force is used with the intent to hurt: children punching and kicking each other, girls beating each other and pulling each other's hair while others stand by and watch what happens, without intervening, except to comment and to incite them to continue, while they record it all behind a smartphone screen. The videos are then posted on groups and pages with the hashtag WorldStar, spread all over the world in order to be visible and popular, to receive likes, comments and shares on an attention-grabbing video.

We are talking about 4 out of 100 teenagers filming their peers while they are being beaten and suffering physical violence, without intervening at all, leaving them at the mercy of this type of violence (Italian National Observatory on Adolescence data).

The most alarming aspect is the sharing, appreciation and incitement to hatred on the net: in no time, in fact, the videos reach thousands of views and likes. No one intervenes; on the contrary, most of those who view these videos are as if they were watching a film, laughing, enjoying themselves, commenting with insults and sharing, fuelling the phenomenon.

The pages where these videos are collected have been flagged and closed several times but then reopened under other names, so that most of the videos can still be found on the web, triggering a very powerful contagion effect.

There is a risk of encouraging a normalisation, a greater acceptance of such behaviors by those who are already prone to this type of violence. There is also a deep irresponsibility in those who watch and do nothing because they do not feel personally involved, because they cover themselves behind the fact that 'it is not them who are fighting'. The screen also dehumanises, strips away feelings and emotions in those who do not put themselves in the victim's shoes and show no solidarity with them.

In these CYP, there is a total lack of awareness of what they are doing both to themselves and to others, failing to understand the limit between play, fun, prevarication and violence. There is a lack of education on all fronts, which must also involve all those spectators who, if they intervened immediately and if they did not share, could at least stem this type of violent phenomenon.

HARASSMENT and PUT DOWN

HARASSMENT consists of the repeated sending of offensive, unpleasant, defamatory and insulting messages, which are sent, repeatedly over time, through technological means (chat, email, text messages, blogs, anonymous phone calls). 

PUT DOWN (denigrate): i.e. denigrate someone through e-mails, text messages, posts sent to a blog, i.e. a group of people. This tool aims at affecting not the person as he/she really is, but his/her reputation in the eyes of others, which is compromised not only on the web but also by all those who are informed by the cyberbully.

This is therefore an unbalanced relationship in which, as in traditional bullying, the target is always in a one-down position (Watzlawick, Beavin, Jackson, 1971), i.e. passively suffers the harassment or, at best, tries, usually unsuccessfully, to convince the persecutor to stop the aggression. In some cases, the cyberbully, in order to reinforce his offensive activity, may also involve his online contacts (mailing lists), who, perhaps even though they do not directly know the target student, lend themselves to participating in the online aggression (one could define this phenomenon as 'harassment with voluntary recruitment', Pisano, 2008).

Here is an explanatory story of this phenomenon:

"Valeria is happy. Finally, after months, she was able to get together with Manuel, the boy she liked from the beginning of school. She overcame her shyness and on Saturday, at Luca's party, she asked Manuel if he wanted to be with her. He, after a very long moment of silence, said yes. Valeria is in seventh heaven and jokes with her friends via chat. Some joke that she is lucky to have such a handsome guy and others congratulate her on her conquest. Valeria laughs, embarrassed and happy at the same time. 

Then the smartphone rings again: it is a text message from an unknown number. The message is brutal: 'I'll make you pay'. Valeria is astonished, she thinks it is a mistake, a message intended for someone else. Shortly after, the smartphone rings again: it is the same number, and the message is even more threatening. Valeria whitens, swallows slowly. Then she takes courage and writes: "Who are you?". No reply. 

For the rest of the day, the mystery user does not answer or search for her. The same happens the next day, so Valeria is quiet again. Finally, she can only think of Manuel, with whom she exchanges an endless series of sweet messages. 

But after three days, the unknown number returns, and this time it leaves no room for doubt: 'You stole Manuel from me'. Valeria is overcome with rage: she has not stolen anyone's boyfriend, it is Manuel who has chosen her. She tries to find out who the sender is, but cannot get any definite information. 

And meanwhile the messages increase, become a constant in her days, like the fear that grips her stomach every time the phone rings. Valeria also begins to dread the journey from home to school: she is afraid that someone will suddenly come and hurt her. And in the end she decides to break it off with Manuel. She no longer wants to see him, because discomfort accompanies every moment spent with him."

DENIGRATION

DENIGRATION consists of the online dissemination of slander, lies or rumors, gossip, often of an offensive and cruel nature, for the purpose of defaming or insulting someone or damaging their reputation and personal relationships.

Cyberbullies may, in fact, send or publish on the Internet altered images (photographs or video clips) of the target, for instance, by modifying the face or body of the target student in order to ridicule him or her, or by making him or her the protagonist of sexually explicit scenes, through the use of photomontages.

In these cases, the peers who receive the messages or view the photographs or video clips on the Internet are not necessarily the targets (as is predominantly the case with harassment and cyberstalking), but sometimes passive spectators of cyberbullying (when they just watch), more likely active ones (if they download the material, report it to other friends, comment on it and vote on it).

Therefore, unlike in cyberstalking, the cyberbully's offensive and intentional activity can take the form of a single action (e.g. publishing a retouched photo of a classmate), capable of generating, with the active, but not necessarily required, contribution of other Internet users ("involuntary recruitment", Pisano, 2008), unpredictable cascading effects.

Finally, denigration is the form of cyberbullying most commonly used by students against teachers: there are, in fact, numerous seriously offensive video clips on the Internet depicting episodes from classroom life. In some cases, the scenes depicted are obviously fake and, therefore, re-created ad hoc by the student, sometimes they are, unfortunately, true.

Here is a concrete example:

"Marco is in his first year of middle school and has landed in a class where he knows no one: making new friends is difficult. To break the ice, Annalisa takes care of it: after asking everyone for their mobile phone number, her classmate creates a class group on WhatsApp. The kids start interacting. There are those who write jokes, like Giacomo, those who send curious photos, like Sara, and those, like Gloria, who only reply with smiling emoticons and simple 'ahahs'. Others, however, view the conversations but do not participate. Annalisa does not worry: sooner or later it will be their turn.  The group on WhatsApp also seems to help in real life, because the children now find themselves talking about that shared photo or that song Sara linked. 

All is well, in short. Until the maths test arrives. The day before, everyone talks about it, and promises to 'help each other' and 'suggest'. The debate, in the group, continues even after the test is over. And for the first time, Dario intervenes.  Dario sits two seats away from Marco: he always keeps to himself and speaks little. His best friends are in other classes and he spends playtime with them. During the test, Dario ended up next to Marco and, throughout the test time, asked him for his results. But Marco was unable to help him because the teacher was keeping an eye on him.

Dario then debuts in the group with a very specific accusation: Marco refused to hand over the task to him. It is a false accusation and full of insults. Marco tries to justify himself, but Dario continues to insult him. Someone tries to stop the comrade, but he gets fed up almost immediately: after all, his attack is only on Marco and everyone prefers to talk about something else.

Only Annalisa writes a private message to her unjustly attacked friend: she tells him to let it go, that Dario is only telling lies and that no one believes him. To Marco, however, those harsh words hurt. He cannot help but give them weight. And so, what used to be a space to have fun, now becomes a battleground, and Marco loses the will to interact with his peers...'

CYBERSTALKING

CYBERSTALKING consists of repeatedly sending intimidating messages containing threats and insults. It can be considered a real telematic persecution after which the target begins to fear for his or her physical safety. 

If Harassment involves targeting someone every now and then, Cyberstalking (online persecution) is a relentless barrage, aiming to frighten the target with threats, even of physical violence.

"It is Saturday afternoon and Mattia has gone to the park with his mates to play a football match against the older children in the neighbourhood. Just before the last goal, the one that will decide the challenge, Mattia sees the attacker of the opposing team advancing. He decides to counter him with a rather impetuous foul, and lands him. His teammates recover the ball and score on the counter-attack.  Among his teammates, Mattia becomes the hero, the one who saved the game. But the attacker of the opposing team doesn't think so: at one point, he approaches him and whispers something incomprehensible in his ear, then walks away.

The next day, Mattia finds a message in the Facebook chat. The sender is the older boy, and the text is a threat with a clear reference to Saturday's game. Twenty minutes pass, and an e-mail arrives at Mattia's e-mail address: the subject is a provocation. An hour later, four more emails arrive containing violent photos. The subject line is a chilling: 'Do you want to end up like that?"

Mattia does not lose his cool and decides to let it go. He hopes that the older boy will tire of it sooner or later. But he does not. After a week, Mattia starts receiving at least ten threatening messages on Facebook and three different emails every day, full of details about what might happen to him if he is found wandering around alone. 

Mattia starts to get scared and begins to no longer want to leave the house alone. He even gives up his usual bicycle ride around the neighbourhood, something he had always loved to do right after lunch. 

After a month, the messages increase further, but Mattia prefers not to talk about it with anyone so as not to look like a coward. But now he hardly goes out anymore: even when he is in company he does not feel safe and the rare times he is with friends he spends the whole time looking around, worried.

"What is it? Everything OK?" his best friend Francesco asks him.

Mattia plays it down: sooner or later that boy will stop threatening him. Maybe."

FLAMING

FLAMING consists of violent and vulgar messages that aim to provoke confrontations and verbal battles in web spaces between two people using the same modality.

Flaming is the offence, pure and simple, made on public social networks and often vulgar, perhaps written between social media comments or in a forum, an online discussion group.

""Paul is very sensitive to environmental protection issues. For some time, he has been sharing articles, photos and videos on his Facebook page that, in his opinion, should 'shake everyone's conscience'. And, in his own way, he achieves some effect. His schoolmates occasionally make fun of him, but most of the time they just comment with a 'Way to go! Way to go!". The same goes for family friends, who appreciate his commitment.

Paul also choses to share all posts publicly to attract more people, but no unknown contact ever commented. One evening, however, under a new anti-pollution article, a user called Max Turbo surprisingly shows up. The first comment is a long sequence of insults that have nothing to do with the article.

Paul decides not to reply: some of his contacts will do it for him. No one intervenes instead, and Max Turbo continues to comment, increasing the creativity of his offences. To make matters worse, a couple of his classmates comment with amusement on the 'style' of the unknown brawler.

At that point, Paul decides to reply and does so at first calmly and diplomatically, urging the user not to swear. And he gets the opposite effect: Max Turbo now takes it out on Paul directly. And the boy loses his patience and starts to hit him back.

The comments become dozens and dozens. Occasionally someone tries to intervene to restore calm, but to no avail, and meanwhile the supporters of both contenders increase. There are those who urge them to dare more and those who take sides. The next day, the post contained over seven hundred comments. Paul rereads them all with a hint of anger and solemnly promises himself that from now on he will never post anything on social networks again, not even those beautiful posts for the protection of the Earth for which he had spent so much energy.

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