Research & Objectives

Primary Research

Analysis of Results

Our survey looked at how people behave when they go online. We designed a questionnaire which enabled us to capture suitable responses. In total sample size was 100 respondents. We found the following responses: 

Question 1:

Our first question looked at the if the victim has being cyber bullied before. Most of the respondents stated that they have not being cyber bullied before. 

Question 2:

Our second question looked at weather or not respondents have ever been anonymous when they go online. This means that have they ever used a different name. Although most of our respondents have not used a false name online (53%) till a large portion have done this. 43 of our respondents have done so and this is one of the reasons why it is difficult to catch a cyber bully. 

Question 3:

Our next question looked at weather our repondents have ever written negative comments about someone online. As shown in the graph below a large percentage have done so (44/100). Thus we can say that our camping will be effective for informing our repondents and other readers on effects of writting negative comments about someone. 

Question 4:

Next we looked at what would the victim do if they were being cyber bullied. Here we can see that most of the time the victims would not do anything and stay quite. Via the use of our camping we hope to inform the victims that they need to take speak up and take action against the cyber bully, and we have stated ways of how this can be done.






















Question 5:

The next question looked at what would people do if they knew someone is being cyber bullied. As shown in the graph below most of the witness (50%) would stand by and do nothing.



Question 6:

In this question we looked at if our respondents think wheater or no. While most of the respondents say that cyberbulling should be addressed.


Question 7: 

When we look at how often cyber bullying may happen we see that most of the respondents feel that cyber bullying happens sometimes to the victim, while the seccond biggest segment feel that it happens often 


Question 8:

This question looked at the differences between cyberbylling and traditional bullying, here our respondents feel that Cyberbullying is considered the worst from of bullying. This is due to the fact that it can occur on a 24/7 bases and that the victim does not need to be present for the bullying to occur. 

Question 9:

This question is looking at the victim of the cyber bullying seeing how they feel after they have been cyber bullied. Here we can see that most of the respondents are effected by cyber bulling as they feel either Unhappy or Angry, about the comments or messages that the bully has posted about them online.

Question 10:

Lastly we looked at what was the effect of cyber bullying on the victim. Most of the respondents felt that they either wanted revenge on the bully or were scared to face people and lost confidence in themselves. 

In summary of our primary research we see the following. Most of our respondents have not being cyber bullied before however from those who have been cyber bullied before simple fell unhappy about cyber bullying and will not react to the situation at hand but they are unhappy about the fact some even wanting revenge on the bully. 

Next when we look at what our respondents feel about the issue of cyber bullying we see that most of our respondents feel that cyber bullying should be addressed and a lager portion of the respondents feel that does occur frequently. 

Most of our respondents stated that they are not anonymous when they go online prefering to keep their original names and profiles online, thus while our respondents prefer to use their real    name and data they are all potential victims online. Most of the respondents have never written negative comments about people online as they are mostly law obiding citizens however they is a high chance of being a victim. 

Secondary Research

Cyber bullying is a very serious offense and it is a very unethical thing to do. Our campaign looks at trying to teach the public about what is cyber bullying, the different ways it can be conducted and then also we wish to inform our public that there are various ways in which we can stop cyber bullying can be prevented and even stopped. We also wish to raise awareness to the fact of the different effects that cyber bullying has on the victim, the bully and the society in general (ie: families, schools ect ect).

WHAT IS CYBER BULLYING

Firstly we will look at what is cyber bullying. To define the term cyber bullying is a deliberate and international attempt to cause physical emotional and psychological harm to others though use of internet, mobile phones of any form of electronic communication. One says they have been cyber bullied as long as they receive abusive texts, or messages on their cell phones, emails, online posts, or if say they are tagged in an image on facebook and then the bully writes something offensive about the victim’s image this is considered as cyber bullying.   It can occur in various forms as we will discuss in our research to name a few it can occur via emails, blogs, forms, games or even mobile phones. Cyber bullying in many countries is considered a federal offense. 

Cyber bullying can occur in various forms such as cell phones, emails, chat rooms or social networks. These are simply the medium/medium’s used by which the bully can conduct online activities. The biggest problem with cyber bullying is that the bully simply hides behind the computer screen which the victim gets harassed and tormented. This is undetectable at certain times, which makes it a major issue in schools and in the society in general. Cyber bullying is done over a long period of time and sometimes when it is known that the victim is being cyber bullied it can be considered already too late. Cyber bullying can occur any time of the day and can be done 24/7. The worst part is that it is not even necessary that the victim needs to be present in order for the cyber bulling to occur, which is why one can say that cyber bullying is worse than actual bullying (physical). An example of cyber bullying is as follows say the cyber bully (the person doing the bullying ), sends a picture of the victim to a certain target audience/viewers to see without the victim knowing of this then it is considered as cyber bullying. The bullying can occur in various forms such as threats to the victim, or sexual remarks posted about the victim which can be online or via text messages or even if the bully simple hates the victim and spends a ‘hate speak’ to the victim it can considered as a form of cyber bullying. It is considered as a major problem in society because usually by the time something is done about the cyber bullying activities it is generally considered very late and there has been too much damage to the victim both emotional and psychologically.  

DIFFRENCES BETWEEN CYBER AND NON-CYBER BULLYING

  When we look at the differences between cyber bullying and actual bullying we see the following differences:

Traditional Bullying	Cyber Bullying
a).The bully needs to be physically present in order for the bullying to occur.	a).The bullying does not have to be there physical for the bullying to occur and it can be done 24/7 regardless of the presence of the victim.
b).The bully can be caught easily by the victim’s friends reporting it, or an adult interfering and action can be take on the bully	b).The bully can be caught but it generally much harder for anyone searching for the bully to find them because due to lack of physical presence is not there.
c).Can have an effect on the victim both physically, socially and emotionally	c).Can have an effect on the victim  social and emotionally in the short run and in the long run it can be physical but then this is generally meaning that the victim commits suicide due to the online bullying that is occurring.
d).Can be stopped by say the victim is to change schools or cities or even country for this matter. As long as the victim is removed from their “current environment” the bullying stops.	d).In cyber bullying even if the victim is in another country the bully can still reach the victim via the use of social networking sites, or email or SMS or long distance phone calls. And due to the every lasting changes in technology the victim can still be reached, one way or another.
e).Say the victim is being bullied at school or in the workplace, once the victim is taken away from their current settings then the bullying activities will come to an end.	e).There is no end or time limit to cyber bullying, if it is not tackled, then the bullying will occur anytime, anyplace, even if the bully and the victim are at different places of the globe.
f).The bullies are known and can be identified	f).It is difficult to know who are the bullies and identify as physical presence is not required.

However they are ways to identify if a victim is being bullied and this is usually the first step if the victim is not willing to communicate with others about their cyber bullying problems. According to Ms. Jenneifer N.Caudle a family physician at the University of Ostepatica Medicine in the US states that if the so called victim in the cyber bullying situation displays any of these symptoms then it is a possibility it is due to cyber bullying that has been occurring. These symptoms are as follows: the most likely to be that if the person (victim) is not happy to use a computer, or has fear of technology then they can be a victim of cyber bullying, other possible causes which have been identified are headaches when asked to use the computer, low self-esteem, avoidance of school, change in attitude, dress and daily habits, on the victims behalf. These are all possible symptoms that can be due to cyber bullying activates.

HOW DOES CYBER BULLYING OCCUR

Now that we have identified what is cyber bullying, we next look at how cyber bullying occurs. There is huge variety of techniques and methods used by the cyber-bully in order to get to the victim. We now look at these different methods of cyber bullying and see in what ways can the victim effect/influence/harass the victim.

	Cyber – bullying method or technique and tools	Explanation of this method
1	Online threats (cyber bullying tool)	This method is when the cyber-bully uses threats to get the victim to do certain things/manipulate the victim. It can lead to a mental breakdown for the victim. The bully usually threatens to cause physical harm or expose some information about the victim for all to see.
2	Chat Rooms (cyber bullying tool)	This occurs when the bully constantly sends message to the victim on social networking sites, such as facebook or twitter, there is no end to amount of message that the bully sends. These messages are usually insulting to the victim.
3	Digital images sent to wide audiences (cyber bullying tool)	This method is when the bully takes photos of the victim on their phones, cameras, other image capturing devices, in various situations ie: Victim is caught in snoring, then the picture is taken and then it is posted online for all to see, and make fun of the victim accordingly.
4	Gamming sites (cyber bullying tool)	Gamming sites is when the bully makes a fake embarrassing photo or character of the victim and then using this character the bully then goes around and shares this figure with other people (this can include people on social networking sites, friends of the victim, the general public looking for online entertainment)
5	Blogs (cyber bullying tool)	When the bully blogs something that is bad in regards to the victim. Blogs are a powerful media tool which can be used to state things about the victim. For example when a boy broke up with his girlfriend he posted mean and nasty things about her online, this lead to the boy’s friends posting mean things about the girl online, and her feelings were hurt. So this shows that blogs can be used as a tool to conduct cyber bullying.
6	Emails (cyber bullying tool)	in this from the bully will continue to send emails which can be threating to the victim or incising the victim to do something they do not wish to do in the first place. The mails can be threats. For example: if the cyber bully sends threating emails to the victim or the email includes private information of the victim which is thereby sent to 100 readers this is considered as a cyber-bullying technique.
7	Messages (texts) (cyber bullying tool)	If say the cyber bully was to constantly send messages which are threating to the victim, or even if these messages are simply
1	Spreading of lies and rumours about the victim/Gossip   (cyber bullying method)	The bully in order to isolate the victim can spread lies about the victim online for other people to see. There is a probability that people will tend to believe what the read online
2	Exclusion (cyber bullying method)	In this method of cyber bullying the bully will exclude the victim form social groups online/electronically. Meaning to say the victim will feel lonely and possibly even desperate for search of friends. In this search the bully will then find the victim online and eventually start to bully the victim, by sending of texts or online messages/emails
3	Cyber staking (cyber bullying method)	This is similar to digital images being sent to wide audience’s technique which is stated above. In this method the bully posts unwanted images or threats to the victim. The bully follows all the victims online activates carefully and keeps posting messages to the victim. The bully in this case is known as a stalker.
4	Trickery (cyber bullying method)	In this method the cyber bully gets their victim to reveal secrets about themselves online or gets them to give up personal particulars and then goes and misuses this given data. For example the victim will be on their computer/online and a pop-up will appear stating that they have won a prize which is say $100,000, the victim now has to click on the following link and then fill in their personal particulars online and then the money will be transferred to their account sated. However when the victim does so then they see they start receiving messages and threats ect, and their back account does not have $100,000. The victim has been tricked.
5	Cyber threats (cyber bullying method)	Similar to online threats where the cyber bully threats to do certain things if the victim does not comply with their demands. For example if the victim does not follow the bullies instructions then the bully will posts embarrassing photos of the victim for all to see. Cyber threats are also one of the major reasons why the victim does not go to friends or any authoritative figure for help. (eg: parents, teachers)

Stated above are the various tools/devices (Online threats, Chat rooms, Digital images sent to wide audiences, gamming sites, spreading of lies and rumours about the victim, blogs, emails and text messaging), are the possible tools/devices that can be used to conduct cyber bullying.

EFFECT OF CYBER BULLYING/HOW IT EFFECTS THE VICTIM AND THE BULLY IN PARTICULAR

Next we will discuss the effects of cyber bullying/how does the effect the victim and the bully in particular. Also we will discuss the effects of cyber bullying on society in general.

The victim of the cyber bullying is the person who the messages, texts, email threats are aimed at. Now due to cyber bullying the victim starts to feel depressed, lonely, and unhappy or have poor sleep. In other words these are few of the many symptoms/effects of cyber bullying. The effects of cyber bullying can range from simply from nightmares to death by suicide, and thus this is why we cannot take cyber bullying lightly.

The first symptom of cyber bullying (from the victim’s point of view) has been identified as health problems such as headaches, or stomach aces or trouble sleeping at night; these will be sudden and frequent in the victim, again while they are many possible causes of these sudden health problems, the victims friends, parents, co-workers or teachers should be aware of the fact that if these health problems do occur on a frequent bases cyber-bullying may be the probable cause.   

The next symptom of cyber bullying (from the victim’s point of view) is say the victim/child/adult is being cyber bullied they may show for example an unwillness to go to school. While they may be many reasons cyber bullying is a possible cause and thus should be looked at if the child is showing this symptom. This can result in low academic performance on the victim’s behalf. 

The next symptom of cyber bullying (from the victim’s point of view) and a more easily identifiable symptom is that of withdraw form social groups such as friends. The victim is afraid to go back into social groups because he/she is afraid of coming in contact with the cyber bully in person, also if the victim does come in contact with his/her friends the victim is afraid that bullying may still occur. So to counter this problem the victim withdraws from current social groups and potential social groups, which results in loneliness and isolation.                        

The next symptom of cyber-bullying (from the victim’s point of view) and a very serious one is known as suicide tendencies. In this type of effect the victim will have frequent thoughts of suicide and may even attempt to commit suicide form time to time, this is due to the fact that at this point the victim will feel helpless and think that if they do not commit suicide the cyber bullying will never go away/stop. The victim also displays some form of self-destructive behaviour and if this is shown by the victim then the victim’s friends and family should take into account that this is possibly due to cyber bullying.

The next symptom of cyber-bullying (from the bully’s point of view) is that although behind an electronic communication device they do then to getting into fights, this is usually with the victim of with a group of people in order to show that they are more powerful than the victim and that they possibly gang leaders/have a group of people who follow them. The bully will inflict mental damage to the victim online via threats ect, and then when the bully encounters the victim say in the school yard or the workplace will inflict physical damage to the victim.

The next symptom of cyber-bullying (from the bully’s point of view) is that although behind an electronic communication device they do then to have bad habits of drinking and smoking. While they are many people who drink and smoke, these people will do so intensively and as drinking and smoking are very general is it not easy to identify the bully among 1000’s others who do drink and smoke. 

HOW CYBER BULLYING CAN BE STOPPED/WAYS TO PREVENT CYBER-BULLYING

They are many ways by which cyber bullying can be stopped. The question is to identify that it is occurring and thereby standing up for what is right. When we look at trying to prevent cyber bullying there are 4 parties involved/who can do something about trying to prevent cyber-bullying namely the victim’s parents, the victims themselves, friends of the victims and the schools/collages which the victim attends. We will discuss how each of these parties plays a respective roles/part in stopping cyber-bullying from occurring.

A.   Friends of the victim

Friends of the victim also play an important role in preventing cyber-bullying from occurring. They can do this by firstly not spreading rumours about their friends (the victim), if they do this the bully will not have any substantial material by which to nag the victim. The more effective thing which the friends of the victim can do is if they are aware of the fact that their friend is a cyber-bully victim, then they need to inform an adult or some form of authority, ie: the school, their superiors or even the police if need be. This way the cyber bullying problem is bought to attention, the bullies can be traced and dealt with thereby bringing relief to the victim.       

B.   Parents of the victim

The parents of the victim play an important role when it comes to trying to prevent their children (the victim) from being affected by the cyber bully. In order to do this the parent needs to firstly spend time with their children (who is the victim), thereby keeping them away from the computer screen or their cell phones, or other forms of electronic communication where the bully can contact the victim. By spending time with their child the parent will get to know their children (the victim) better, and thus get to know of the problem’s that are occurring (the cyber bullying activates), in their child’s (the victims) lives. The parent can create a series of various offline activates which can range from going for a walk with their child to playing games and interacting with their children, these offline activates will reduce the time the victim spends online or on any form of electronic communication and thus less time in interacting with the bully. The next thing the parent of the victim can do to try to reduce the cyber bulling effect on their child is monitoring their child’s online activates, this would involve getting to know their child’s online friends and joining their child’s social networking sites. However the problem here is that the child may be reluctant to accept their parents ‘friend’ request on their social networking sites such as facebook, in which case the parent needs to use another name in order to communicate with their child. The parent should also try to get to know their child’s online friends and who they are so as to try to identify potential threats from anyone. The parent should also try to get to be on their child’s social networking sites, thereby being able to keep track of their child’s activates; the problem here is that many children refuse to accept their parents’ friend request on the social networking sites, in which case the parent should use tracking devices on their child’s social networking sites. They should also check cell phone messages thereby knowing if the bully has interacted with their child. The next thing the parent should try to do is teach their child online manners and etiquette, to their child, these values should be focused on how to behave online when their child is on social networking sites and how they communicate with other people via the use of electronic communication devices such as email’s, cell phones ect. The advantage of this is that if the child is taught this from an early age there is high probability that they will not become a cyber-bully in the first place and then the whole problem will be averted and if they are to be cyber-bullied in any way they (the victim) should learn to report it to an adult when it does occur. This will be in corporation with the child’s school. The parent should set guidelines for new technology meaning to say that they could have the home computer in the center of the house in-stead of the child (the victim), having one in their room. While the downside of this is that the child (the victim) may not feel that they have privacy online (as the parents are watching), the parent should try to explain to the child (the victim) that it is for their own good. The parent can also set a fixed number of hours their child can be on social networking sites per day/per week, thereby there is less contact between victim and the bully. For more drastic prevention methods the parent could remove the technology from their child altogether (eg: taking away of cell phones and laptops and computer time not being allowed at all for their children), but they should try to explain that it is for the child’s own good. Thereby the bully can no longer contact the victim. Lastly the parent can involve the police/authorities, but this will require the parent to keep evidence of the messages, emails, and facebook comments or twitter tweets that the bully is sending to the victim (their child). There-after the authorities will take measures to track and take action against the cyber-bully.

C.   Teachers of the victim 

Next we look at teachers of the victim and the bully. Schools can try to teach their students of the dangers of cyber bullying, why it is bad/wrong. They can teach online ethics as a subject in the school looking at how the students should behave when there are online on blogs, social networking sites and emails and they can teach the students appropriate use of language which is to be used online and thereby trying to imply these ethics inside students so that they do not become cyber-bullies, as students are made aware of the effects of cyber-bullying on the victim in particular. The next thing that the schools and teachers of the cyber bully or the victim can do to prevent cyber bullying is conduct clubs and support groups which are against cyber bullying. A school has clubs which can be support groups as a club is a group of people who share common interest so if there are many students who are cyber-bully victims and they are all in one club in school they will be a greater chance of hearing their stories and problem’s and putting a stop to cyber bullying. Creation of special soft wear for the victim which enable tracking of online activity, this method will prove effective as this will let the teachers and the parents get to know who is the cyber bully and thereby take action accordingly, however this technique may be expensive to conduct and it needs to be installed in the home computers, child’s laptop or cell phone or any other form of electronic communication whereby the victim and the bully interact.

D.    The Victim

 Lastly the victim themselves can prevent cyber bullying from occurring. Although this may not be easy for the victim due to the online threats or the cell phone messages sent by the bully, the victim can protect himself or herself accordingly. The first thing the victim can do is block communication with the bully, this means that on social networking sites the victim block out the bully and thereby cutting out communication with the bully. The next thing the victim can do is when the bully sends messages to the victim the victim should keep copies of these messages be it from online social networks, emails or cellular phone messages. The problem here is that the victim may be very tempted to delete the message as in no to have to see it again and again, this should not be done because then the victim can alert parents or their school ect and have evidenced to show cyber bulling occurrence. This can simply be done by a screen snapshot. If things are very bad off for the victim then the victim needs to be able to take it up with the police. The next thing the victim can do in order to prevent themselves from being cyber-bullied is that they should not fight “fire with fire”, although this method may sound attractive and may be seen as dealing with their own problem’s the thing is that if they do this the bully will only be more aggregated to continue harassing the victim. The next thing the victim should do is not open unknown messages the bully will generally not use their real name for cyber bullying activates and say they send their victim some inappropriate content or threating messages the victim should not open the messages from the bully, if they are repeatedly being sent. This way they do not have to read it and get emotional hurt in any way. Another way the victim can combat the bully/stop the bully from cyber bullying them is changing all forms of electronic communication this would include changing their cell phones numbers, creating new email addresses, blocking the bully on social networking sites or even withdrawing from the social networking sites altogether. The last thing that the victim can do in order to prevent themselves from being cyber bullied is limit the amount of information they post on social networking sites and take care of what they post online. For example before they post information they should look at what they are posting, they can take care off not uploading any embarrassing photos of themselves, if the bully has done this they can say that the photo is not of them and explain the situation in the photo, thereby they will not be made fun off.

-FIN-