Prevention strategies
Cyberbullying is a phenomenon which is emerging and spreading rapidly like an epidemic. In March 2018, a survey commissioned by Talking Point found that three in four teens in Singapore reported to have experienced Cyberbullying (Ruiz, 2019). This new form of bullying or harassment in not only damaging the social cultural and ethical values of the new generation, it also restrict the career growth of the students by harming their mental health. In has been proven that the social pillars such as healthcare service, education system and low enforcement have the capabilities to rescue the new generation from this social epidemic.
The aim of this research is to explore the effective intervention or prevention d programs of Cyberbullying in order to find the most effective technique or strategy. Therefore the purpose of this study is strengthening the secondary school students by equipping them with scientifically sound method to combat cyber bulling. Therefore, the research questions are
- What are the strategic intervention programs to prevent the impact and occurrence of Cyberbullying within secondary school students?
- Which is the most effective intervention program to prevent the impact and occurrence of Cyberbullying within secondary school students?
- What will be the best method or approach to implement such prevention technique within current provisions?
Cyberbullying is an act of posting, sending and spreading false, cruel and harmful images, videos and audios through internet, especially through social media for bullying a person. It is a technologically advance method of bullying or harassing someone. Cyberbullying is experienced in many ways, such as Harassment or repeated insults through various forms; Defamation of a person’s character through derogatory postings, rumours, or images; Flaming or fighting messages using anger and vulgar language; Outing or deceiving someone into sharing secrets or private information; Polling such as posting an image on a voting website to make fun of a person’s looks; Impersonation or identity theft to embarrass or destroy a person’s identity; Cyber Stalking including sending intimidating or threatening messages; Sexting including sexual solicitation and/or exploitation; Unsafe digital communities with shared interests, such as social communities that validate eating disorders, violence, or drug use (Rice et al., 2015). A survey of 2014 in Singapore found that 1 in 9 teenagers are victims of Cyberbullying. This situation has decorated severely by 2018, where a survey in 2018 has found that 3 in 4 teens in Singapore are victims of Cyberbullying (Baldry et al., 2018).
Prevention strategies
Many strategies are available to prevent the effect or occurrence of Cyberbullying with two different implementation patterns namely addressing the Cyberbullying and Mitigating the impact of Cyberbullying. Both technical and non-technical strategies are used to address and mitigate the Cyberbullying. However, currently almost 75% of social activities are utilising the technical strategies (Bauman, Toomey & Walker, 2013). Most utilised technical strategy is protecting the children and adulations via web security or protection system. It includes contacting the convicted persons online, changing login id or password, deleting anonymous messages and others. There is another technical solution or scheme, which very popular in UK named Beat bullying Cyber monitor. In this system students will be trained to monitor any unauthorised activities with their social media profiles. Apart from that virtual peer support is also available to supportive through remote controlling the device.
Technical strategies for addressing and mitigating cyberbullying
The non technical techniques are mainly awareness programs that involves with counselling victims, social support, emotional bonding and others. Although the impacts of these non-technical aspects are not directly visible, however the impacts of these activities have been proven 5% more effective for long term improvement for teenagers in USA (Berne et al., 2013). These programs are currently used as alternative or supporting short term programs of mainstream cyber-security strategies. In England Thompson, Robinson, and Smith Thompson, Robinson, and Smith evaluated two e-safety films to make adulations aware of the threats. There are at least 10 to 15 reports that showed that these films have indirectly help the victims to get recovered from their traumatised situation (Sabella, Patchin, & Hinduja, 2013). Counselling and community building are another two non technical strategies where victims can convey their experience to someone, from which they can release their emotional burden while making some other teenagers aware of those situations.
Along with the safety programs and cyber security strategies parents, peers and educators has huge responsibility to help the victim emotionally and psychologically to be completely recovered. Not only for victims, but parents also can make their children aware by stating the situation and teaching them strategies to avoid the possibilities. Similarly, the friends, peers, classmates and even siblings can act as a big support in the process of getting recovered from any mentally unhealthy situation caused by Cyberbullying. Communication and socio-emotional bonding can improve the 35% of mental health situation of an average person (Slonje, Smith & FriséN, 2013). At the same time, educators as well as educational organisations have the responsibility to develop healthy and supportive environment for the students where they can share their experience and gain knowledge about how to get rid of Cyberbullying.
Therefore, there are two dependent and two independent variables. The independent variables are strategies and social environment of victims. The dependent variables are effectiveness of strategies and student cantered approach. The hypotheses are:
H1: Providing non-technical intervention or prevention program is more effective than technical development program
H2: Student cantered approach can be executed through the involvement of parents, teachers and peers
Methodology
The purpose of this research is to explore the distribution of declared variable and to find the interrelation within the variables. Therefore, the design of this study will exploratory to gain all the additional outcomes besides the pre-declared estimations. The study will be focused on a particular location or region. In this case the study location will be the school, where the anti-Cyberbullying strategies will be implemented. Therefore, to measure the possible outcomes of various strategies with more accurate approximation the study has to focus on more numerical and practical based approach (Blaikie & Priest, 2019). Therefore, the study will focus on the positivist approach to conduct the research. Because of this selection of design and approach the scope of the executable method will be more precise and concentrated on Quasi-Experimental pre-test post-test design. In this research method the study needs to have two groups to study and compare. At the same time, there will not be any intermediate assessment stage to either regulate or assess the outcomes.
Non-technical strategies for awareness programs and counselling victims
The Quasi-Experimental groups will be made by segregating the target participants into two segments (Neuman, 2013). For sampling process the ordered random sampling will be conducted, where the participants will be chosen through a dichotomous question. The, pre-test will be conducted to identify their present psychological situation, confidence in using social media and ability to handling such harassments. After that, the experimental group of will be provided with technical and non technical anti-Cyberbullying program. At the same time, the control group will be provided with only technical strategies and programs. After continuing these programs through 6 month, a post-test will be conducted to identify the changes in their pre-observed psychological attributes. The total sample size will be 60, where 50% or 30 students will be considered as experimental group and another group of 30 students will be considered as control group.
As per the research method, the outcomes will be ordinal and numerical values. Therefore, to measure those values and formulate the conclusion with accuracy quantitative data analysis will be required through chi-squire test. The chi-squire test results will be tested with the testing probability value which is 0.05. To examine the pre-test data, the percentage distribution states tics will be used. It will help to monitor the demographical distribution of the participants. The aim of this quantitative analysis will be to justify and authenticate the hypotheses taken earlier.
The ethical consideration is one of the most important factors of any research, which present the viability, authenticity and values of the study (Coolican, 2017). Therefore, before conducting the studies, the students were provided with an agreement paper, where they can see the purpose of this study. Student who will acknowledge entering the research process will only be taken for this study. At the same time, the identity and other personal details of the participants will not be exposed in the final research. Besides, the collected information will be used only for this study.
References
Baldry, A. C., Farrington, D. P., Sorrentino, A., & Blaya, C. (2018). Cyberbullying and Cybervictimization. In International Perspectives on Cyberbullying (pp. 3-23). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Bauman, S., Toomey, R. B., & Walker, J. L. (2013). Associations among bullying, cyberbullying, and suicide in high school students. Journal of adolescence, 36(2), 341-350.
Bauman, S., Toomey, R. B., & Walker, J. L. (2013). Associations among bullying, cyberbullying, and suicide in high school students. Journal of adolescence, 36(2), 341-350.
Berne, S., Frisén, A., Schultze-Krumbholz, A., Scheithauer, H., Naruskov, K., Luik, P., … & Zukauskiene, R. (2013). Cyberbullying assessment instruments: A systematic review. Aggression and violent behavior, 18(2), 320-334.
Blaikie, N., & Priest, J. (2019). Designing social research: The logic of anticipation. John Wiley & Sons.
Coolican, H. (2017). Research methods and statistics in psychology. Psychology Press.
Neuman, W. L. (2013). Social research methods: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. Pearson education.
Rice, E., Petering, R., Rhoades, H., Winetrobe, H., Goldbach, J., Plant, A., … & Kordic, T. (2015). Cyberbullying perpetration and victimization among middle-school students. American Journal of Public Health, 105(3), e66-e72.
Ruiz, R. M. N. M. (2019). CURBING CYBERBULLYING AMONG STUDENTS: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF EXISTING LAWS AMONG SELECTED ASEAN COUNTRIES. PEOPLE: International Journal of Social Sciences, 4(3).
Sabella, R. A., Patchin, J. W., & Hinduja, S. (2013). Cyberbullying myths and realities. Computers in Human behavior, 29(6), 2703-2711.
Slonje, R., Smith, P. K., & FriséN, A. (2013). The nature of cyberbullying, and strategies for prevention. Computers in human behavior, 29(1), 26-32.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
