Cyberbullying Awareness for Mitigating Consequences in Higher Education

Abstract

Technology has many positive effects on education, but negative effects also exist. One of the negative effects is cyberbullying spreading out of school boundaries to the social networks. The increasing popularity of social media among youngsters engenders cyberbullies who exploit the virtual environment besides the usual emails. This distresses the students and adversely affects their families, teachers, and others around them. Although research studies mainly concentrate on prior education, there seems to be a need to investigate the situation in higher education. This study focuses on students studying technology and related disciplines, who are hence likely to be well connected with cyberspace, and explores their awareness about cyberbullying. The findings reveal that female students have significantly less awareness than males. This study will help address some gender issues in cyberbullying.

Keywords

cyberbullying higher education bullying management information systems awareness

Introduction

The use of technology has increased in every aspect of social life: changing daily schedules, relationships, communication, work processes, and creating new forms of networks and extending existing ones. Arıcak, Tanrıkulu, Siyahhan, and Kınay (2013) denoted the situation as, “Despite these positive changes, the advances in information and communication technologies also introduced problems that are unique to information age” (p. 318). Among other problems, extensive use of technology has engendered a new form of bullying that disseminates the incidences. Consequently, bullying is now referred as two different concepts: traditional bullying and cyberbullying (Pieschl, Porsch, Kahl, & Klockenbusch, 2013). The diversity of cyberbullying and traditional bullying is stated as exhibiting a difference in the intensity and frequency of attacks, creating difficulty to identify suspects, challenging to stop, and increasing number of victims from anywhere and anyplace (Sabella, Patchin, & Hinduja, 2013). As a result of these, cyberbullying has become “a significant concern of parents, educators and policy makers” (Talwar, Gomez-Garibello, & Shariff, 2014, p. 122).

This study concentrates on cyberbullying awareness of students in a developing university of a developing country and its relationship with gender, age, and Internet usage. The adolescent group included in this study has been seldom considered in the literature so this study will contribute to new insights to the field.

Cyberbullying

Bullying has existed since time immemorial and manifested itself in physical, verbal, and indirect actions as an aggressive behavior that causes harm, repeats over time, and develops imbalanced power (Kowalski & Limber, 2007; Nansel et al., 2001). The latest developments in technology have changed the practice, boundary, context, and time frame of bullying. This transformation not only changed the nature of bullying but also renamed the term as electronic bullying or cyberbullying. Smith et al. (2008) defined cyberbullying as “An aggressive, intentional act carried out by a group or individual, using electronic forms of contact, repeatedly and over time against a victim who cannot easily defend him or herself” (p. 376). Another definition by National Crime Prevention Council (2016) is “Online bullying, called cyberbullying, happens when teens use the Internet, cell phones, or other devices to send or post text or images intended to hurt or embarrass another person” (para. 2) . According to Ybarra, Boyd, Korchmaros, and Oppenheim (2012), cyberbullying is bullying communicated through online environment. Marcum, Higgins, Freiburger, and Ricketts (2014) professed cyberbullying as fairly new and “one of the most recently recognized forms of cybercrime” (p. 539). Cyberbullying is claimed to be at “widespread rates among youth and adults” around 75% in school age (Kowalski, Giumetti, Schroeder, & Lattanner, 2014). Hinduja and Patchin (2011) identified that youth and young adults are mainly targeted on their sexual orientation or gender identity/expression. Wang, Iannotti, and Luk (2012) tested the patterns of physical, verbal, exclusion, rumor, and cyberbullying behavior in adolescents.

Ybarra and Mitchell (2007) investigated the effects of bullying and cyberbullying on the health of adolescents. It is determined that two main consequences of this problem can be psychological and emotional (Hinduja & Patchin, 2009). “Cyberbullying is a global public health challenge with the potential to disrupt or destroy the lives of children, adolescents, and their families” (D’Auria, 2014).

Technology and Cyberbullying

Technology even changed the parties involved in bullying. According to Willard (2007),

A cyberbully may be a person whom the target knows or an online stranger. Or the cyberbully may be anonymous, so it is not possible to tell. A cyberbully may solicit involvement of other people who do not know the target—cyberbullying by proxy. (p. 268)

Besides, cyberbullying can occur to anyone without differentiation in any age, gender, ethnicity, academic performance, and socio-economic level (Arıcak et al., 2008). As Dredge, Gleeson, and de la Piedad Garcia (2014) summarized from related literature, cyberbullying victims are people with low self-confidence, self-esteem, and somatic symptoms who exhibit emotional reactions such as anger, sadness, embarrassment, frustration, annoyance, fear, and terrorization. Marcum et al. (2014) investigated the relationship between being a victim of and being an offender of cyberbullying and also compare the experiences of female and male. They discover that there is no difference in cyberbullying in Facebook between female and male who have low self-control, and that those who are cyberbullied are most likely to cyberbully.

Sabella et al. (2013) advocated that cyberbullying, augmented by the technology, can happen at “speed of thought” and can be crueler than traditional bullying because it targets a larger audience by using a rich selection of media. There can be more problematic aspects of cyberbullying compared with traditional bullying. These dissimilarities are stated as cyberbullying can occur at any time, and the content can be spread very quickly and to a mass quantity of people so that the students can be more affected by “virtual reality” (Kowalski & Limber, 2007).

The technology used in cyberbullying was first emails (the electronic replacement of traditional mailing); now the use of Internet and Web 2.0 settings is also involved. Some of these venues can be named as instant messaging, chat rooms, websites, online games, social networking sites, and text messaging (Kowalski & Limber, 2013). In addition, even some activities such as online shopping, online research, and video sharing have the potential of experiencing cyberbullying (Navarro & Jasinski, 2013). Technology used in cyberbullying can make big differences by wide and instant dissemination effect. A great number of supporters can gather in the bullying process in a short time frame, besides that if the victim is not experienced in using, and has limited access to, technology, then he or she is easy target and has difficulty to escape (O’Brien & Moules, 2010). The students’ experience in computer and Internet usage is a great concern where the results of Ybarra and Mitchell’s (2004) study discovered that cyberbullies rate themselves as Internet experts compared with those who do not cyberbully others.

Social Networks providing an innovative way of communication and collaboration are the latest networking opportunities for students to communicate, share, and interact with each other. However, besides such constructive capabilities, social networks can be used as a tool for harassment and abuse of others (Lenhart et al., 2011). There can be different forms of cyberbullying such as sending repeated messages, spreading unfavorable personal information, and participating in insulting others (Marcum et al., 2014). In the past, students were often bullied at school life. However, now, cyberbullying affects their life as a whole, spreading from school boundaries to the social networks, which became a continuation of real life. And this range does not only cover friends and peers, it is spread all over the network, to friends of friends.

Cyberbullying in Higher Education

Minor, Smith and Brashen (2013) emphasized that there are a large number of research studies related to cyberbullying prior to higher education. Twenty-first century use of virtual space increased the global efforts to “understand” and “prevent” cyberbullying in higher education. By means of Williams and Guerra (2007), Nansel quoted, “Such interest coincides with a growing awareness of the detrimental consequences of being bullied on children’s well-being as well as the recognition that bullying is a significant problem in schools” (p. 14).

A study by Smith and Yoon (2013) conveyed that the university students claimed a little percentage of cyberbullying in campus: Two percent said that students bully other students, and 3% said that instructors bully students. On the other side, Minor et al. (2013) investigated the existence of cyberbullying to find out whether students bully their faculty members. The results revealed that 33.8% of online instructors from various programs in School of Management claimed to be cyberbullied by students and 4.4% were hesitant.

Not only students but also other people around them in school are concerned and affected by the consequences of cyberbullying. Their awareness will benefit them to illuminate, define, analyze, and solve the problem. Minor et al. (2013) recommended several approaches that could help mitigate the problem of cyberbullying including training of students, faculty members, and supervisors.

Gender Issues in Cyberbullying

A few gender-related studies claim that female students perceive cyberbullying as a problem (Agatston, Kowalski, & Limber, 2007). Those who are the targets of cyberbullying and those who witnessed also claim that one of the top target topics is gender (Smith & Yoon, 2013). Navarro and Jasinski’s (2013) study investigates the risk of cyberbullying between genders. Li (2006) commented on the importance of determining the role gender plays in cyberbullying. Also, the overall findings of Faucher, Jackson, and Cassidy (2014) from Canadian universities determine gender similarities and differences that exist between male and female student respondents’ backgrounds.

Problem Statement

The students, who are studying the information systems–related disciplines such as Management and Information Systems (MIS), are expected to be more acquainted with the Internet and technology than others. One of the authors determined that the incidence of cyberbullying has increased during the use of social media for support of teaching and learning. Before the possibility of university students being engaged in cyberbullying as a bully or victim, it is needed to identify the extend they are aware of cyberbullying. This awareness may enable them to take their guards against this 21st-century crime.

The consequences of cyberbullying in higher education can be considered more significant and diverse than foregoing cyberbullying activities within school boundaries. With the development of technology and social media tools, cyberbullying is expanding independent of time and space. This expansion also prohibits the control and prevention mechanisms of cyberbullying by teachers, administrators, peers, and family. Especially in higher education, this control is extremely challenging because the students are young adults with limited supervision and protection of school and family. As a result, the cyberbully victims are at more risk and some may be driven to severe consequences such as suicide (Hinduja & Patchin, 2011).

The purpose of this research is to investigate the cyberbullying awareness of university students with respect to gender, age, and Internet usage in higher education.

The following research questions will be searched for:

Research Question 1: To what extend are the students aware of cyberbullying?

Research Question 2: Is there a difference in cyberbullying awareness based on gender, age, and Internet usage frequency?

Method

The primary aim of this research is to determine the cyberbullying awareness of MIS students and its relations with the independent variables gender, age, and Internet usage. Survey research method was used to collect data. An instrument prepared by Yenilmez and Seferoğlu (2013) for measuring teacher’s awareness is adopted to explore students’ awareness. The data collected were later analyzed by using SPSS 20.0 Statistical Package.

Participants

The target population was the students from department of MIS in a government university in Turkey. Student samples are from this department for the convenience of the authors. Also, the discipline they study is expected to have more Internet and technological savvy students and may have intensive possibility of facing cyberbullying type of crimes. The sampling consists of 174 participants from a target population of 189.

The number of participating female students (50.6%, n = 88) and male students (49.4%, n = 86) was very close. According to the ages, 76.4% of the participants were between 17 and 20 (n = 133), 23% were between 21 and 24 (n = 40), and only one student older than 25. The Internet usage frequency was high in most of the students; 77% (n = 134) of the students used Internet more than few hours a day. Only 19.5% (n = 34) used the Internet less than few hours a day, and 2.9% (n = 5) used it less than few hours a week. Here, “few hours” is considered as 2 to 3 hours. There was just one exceptional student who declared that he or she uses the Internet only few hours a month.

Measures

The introduction of the instrument used in this research explained the aim of the research and informed the students that they have the choice of not responding all or part of it, if it is against their will, and that their responses will not be used for other than research purposes. In the first section of the survey instrument, there was the demographic information of the students such as gender, age, and Internet usage frequency. Second part was a 12-item cyberbullying awareness questionnaire. To identify the level of awareness, a Likert-type 5-point scale was used with agree/disagree scale where 1 is indicative of strongly disagree, 2 is disagree, 3 is neither agree nor disagree, 4 is agree, and 5 is strongly agree.

Procedure

A pilot study was administered to randomly selected 20 students, to find out the clarity and comprehension of the items, in case there were problems. The feedback from these responses was used in finalizing the survey. At the beginning of the survey, a paragraph was included to explain the aim and significance of the study to the students. Also, the ethical issues and their choice of not to participate were stated. Later, the students who were willing to participate in the survey gathered in the classrooms to fill up the questionnaire. Collected data were entered into SPSS 20.0 and analyzed to find answers to the research questions of the study.

Statistical Analysis

The analysis was done in two stages: First, the reliability of the instrument was tested and then descriptive data analysis was done. An approximation of the internal consistency reliability of the instrument was tested to determine Cronbach’s alpha. For the whole instrument, Cronbach’s α = .773 (scale item: 12), which showed that the instrument was quite reliable. In the data analysis procedures, mean was calculated as descriptive statistics. T test was used to find differences of level of cyberbullying awareness with respect to gender, age, and Internet usage frequency.

Results

Although technology facilitated fast communication, bulk data sharing, and ease of accessing information, it created a vulnerable environment. This is despite technological developments taking into account “problems associated with use.” In this context, diffusiveness of this situation increased the number of related studies. Our study, exploring the intersection of higher education and the awareness and engagement in cyberbullying, is one of them taking into consideration MIS students with the following findings.

The results showed that the item lowest mean value was for Item 02 (M = 2.16). This showed that students disagree with the fact that “Cyberbullying is done by only adults” declaring there was no age limit for cyberbullying. The reason for this may be the students think that social media and Internet, which are used by all the segments of the society without age limit, can be the environment for cyberbullying. The highest mean value was for Item 09 (M = 4.19), confirming their agreement with the statement “Cyberbullies share private information, images and photos of people that they want to harm.” Students have selected this important fact, meaning they have the awareness that people can harm each other and abuse privacy using technology. Total mean value was (M = 3.64), and all other mean items are displayed in Table 1.

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics for Cyberbullying Awareness (N = 174).

Item	Description	M
01	Students are deliberately exposed to repeated and intentional malicious behavior that cause harm to others, by the use of information and communication technologies in the virtual environments.	3.55
02	Cyberbullying is done by only adults.	2.16^*
03	Cyberbullies are more likely to be men than women.	3.49
04	Children have low possibility to be exposed to cyberbullying behavior.	2.30
05	Cyberbullies seize personal computers, email address, or private information.	4.01
06	Cyberbully deliberately sends infected email messages to others.	3.89
07	Cyberbully uses threatening behavior via communication media over the Internet (chat rooms, instant messaging, email, etc.) or telephone.	4.01
08	Cyberbully would damage the reputation of others by distributing gossip and rumors.	3.93
09	Cyberbullies share the private information, images, and photos of the people that they want to hurt.	4.19^**
10	Cyberbullies use the private information, images, and photos of the people that they want to harm for blackmailing.	4.13
11	Cyberbullies seize the password of a person’s account and damage the account owner’s relations with others.	4.17
12	Cyberbullies gather with other users in virtual environment to force a person to be excluded from the group or leave the environment.	3.82
Total		3.64

The lowest mean value.

The highest mean value.

T test was done to find the difference in Items 01 through 12 based on demographics. The results show that there was no statistically significant difference between awareness for 12 items and independent variables based on age and Internet frequency. There was statistically significant difference between Items 01, 03, and 05 only based on gender. Table 2 shows the details of all items. This result confirms the importance of gender differences, which is also emphasized in related research mentioned above (Arıcak et al., 2008).

Table 2.

Relationship Between Cyberbullying Awareness and Gender.

	n	M	t Value	Significance (Two-Tailed)
Item 01
Female	88	3.28
Male	86	3.83
			3.199	.002
Item 03
Female	88	3.07
Male	86	3.93
			4.562	.001
Item 05
Female	88
Male	86
			2.830	.005

As seen in Table 2, significance of Item 01 was .002 < .05. This item was the definition of cyberbullying stating that “Students are deliberately exposed to repeated and intentional malicious behavior that cause harm to others, by the use of information and communication technologies in the virtual environments.” Male students are more aware of this description of cyberbullying than females. This result may be confirming the remark, “males appeared to be more at risk of cyber perpetration” by MacDonald and Roberts-Pittman (2010). Agatston et al.’s (2007) study shows that the majority of female students indicated that cyberbullying was a problem.

Next, in Item 03, there was statistically significant difference between male and female students (.001 < .05). Here, male students were more aware than females that “Cyberbullies are more likely to be men than women.”

The last item that is significantly different between male and female students was Item 05 (.005 < .05) which is, “Cyberbullies seize personal computers, email address, or private information.” Similar to the previous two items, male students were more aware than the female students about the information security seizing activities by cyberbullies. The differences of male and female students’ awareness of cyberbullying activities are not very surprising since that is in line with what Turan, Polat, Karapırlı, Uysal, and Turan’s (2011) claims of the number of male cyberbully and more often females being cyberbullying victims.

Discussion

The main purpose of this study was to provide insight to cyberbullying while determining to what level the technology-savvy higher education students are aware of it. Differences between demographics such as age, gender, and Internet usage were investigated. Results clarified that students are aware of cyberbullying. Li’s (2006) results showed that little more than half of the students were aware of cyberbullying issues, and males were more likely to be cyberbullies than their female peers. Molluzzo and Lawler’s (2011) study supported these findings. They found out, however, college students were totally aware of cyberbullying and incidents, yet insignificant number of students claimed it as a serious issue. And most of the cyberbullying is of harassing messages posted on a social networking site. Precisely in some issues of our research results, male students were identified to be more aware than female students. These were the settings of cyberbullying, interference of security, and gender issues.

Cyberbullying can create unhappiness, anxiety, distress, and difficulty to focus on academic work referred to as “psychosocial and academic effects of cyberbullying” by Mishna, Saini, and Solomon (2009). According to these findings, students, administrators, teachers and supervisors, and families should play an important role to improve students’ cyberbullying awareness and determine the strategy to react in such cases. Cyberbullying attacks not only cause fear and anger but also humiliate students. These kinds of actions are attacks to a person’s individual health, self-perception, and education rights. It may even prohibit creating an inclusive educational environment that values and respects diversity and equity.

To avoid such negative traits, cyberbullying can be mitigated by taking the following steps. The university has to be sensitive in these issues and prepare policy for handling cyberbullying. Minor et al. (2013) suggested that the faculty members and supervisors need to be trained about cyberbullying behavior and how to control it. The students also need to be trained about cyberbullying behavior and how to mitigate it. As a result, developing cyberbullying awareness will be a means to moderate consequences in higher education.

The following studies in this area confirm that men are more involved in cyberbullying activities. Dilmaç (2009) stated that males reported more cyberbullying behavior than females. A similar result was reached by Kowalski and Limber (2007). Also, Navarro and Jasinski’s (2013) study showed that females are at greater risk as target of cyberbullying compared with males. In opposition, study of Ybarra and Mitchell (2004) mentioned that males and females equally reported individual cyberbullying. From this point on, studies show that both female and male students are showing similar cyberbullying behavior. Although in the last few years, studies show that more females reported as victims than males (Zalaquett & Chatters, 2014). Patchin and Hinduja (2011) argued that within adolescents, 24% reported being victim and 16% being cyberbully. Those who have been victims most likely become offenders (Marcum et al., 2014). This also may show that students are aware of both roles of cyberbullying.

The findings of this study also support the situation of females of a developing country. It is important to emphasize the consciousness raising particularly in female students not to be victims. Favela (2010) discussed that “female violence is a real and tangible concern that must be addressed” by suggesting the prevention strategies. Furthermore, the study will contribute to the literature for higher education students’ awareness of cyberbullying to protect not only the students but even the teachers and administrators from this 21st-century crime.

The university from where participant students were drawn is located in a conservative community small town in central Anatolia. As a consequence, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, questioning, and allied (LGBTQA) nuances are not pronounced nor admitted by individuals let alone be visible. So it may not be usually subject of cyberbullying. As a limitation, this study refers to sex identity as female and male in terms of gender. The number of students surveyed in this research may be considered a limitation; however, they suitably represent students attending MIS departments in government universities. The study may be eventually applied to a larger group of students from different universities, but this is not likely to produce drastically different results for all universities in Turkey that receive students through a centrally managed competitive entrance exam. Instead, future study may concentrate on variety and instances of cyberbullying in higher education aiming to evolve an inventory for the benefit of future researchers.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Alev Elçi, PhD, works as an assistant professor in Aksaray University, Management and Information Systems department. She was a visiting researcher in Roger Williams University with a 6 months grant of Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK). Her main research areas are faculty development, technology-enhanced learning, educational technology, social networks, learning communities, animation- and game-based learning, internationalization, and narrative approaches. She has co-authored a book titled, Faculty Beliefs and Needs: Opening the Gate to ICT-Based Professional Development in Teaching and Learning. She is currently teaching database management, project management, knowledge economy and society.

Zeliha Seçkin, PhD, was an undergraduate at the public administration department of Selçuk University in 1998 and graduated from Niğde University Institute of Social Sciences in 2002. She got her doctoral degree in 2009 from Niğde University Institute of Social Sciences. She is currently a faculty member and an associate professor in Management Information Systems department. Her work areas are mobbing, organizational behavior, organizational citizenship, and organizational commitment, technology and innovation.

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