UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI MILANO-BICOCCA Progetto QUA_SI Corso di Dottorato in Società dell’Informazione CYBERBULLYING BEHIND FRONTIERS: Deviant Behaviours and Intercultural Factors in Digital Communication Tutor: chiar. mo prof. Davide Diamantini Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione Tesi di dottorato di: Giulia MURA Matricola n° 042124 Ciclo XVIII (VI) Anno Accademico 2010/2011 Università di Milano-Bicocca – Progetto QUA_SI, Dottorato in Società dell’Informazione A. A. 2010/11 Tesi di Dottorato di Giulia Mura: “Cyberbullying behind frontiers” Sommario Cyberbullying behind frontiers: ................................................................................................. 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 4 1 Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue ...................... 7 1.1 Youth and ICT diffusion .......................................................................................... 11 1.2 Bullying and cyberbullying ........................................................................................ 15 1.3 Cyberbullying, not just bullying! ............................................................................. 21 2 Looking for explanations… .............................................................................................. 28 2.1 Man will always be man: the cross cultural research ............................................. 28 2.2 You talkin’ to me? Computer mediated communication ..................................... 33 2.2.1 Moral disengagement ........................................................................................ 36 2.2.2 The online disinhibitory effect ......................................................................... 39 2.3 Do they know what they are doing? ........................................................................ 43 2.3.1 The development of a Theory of Mind .......................................................... 47 2.4 The Space Transition Theory ................................................................................... 49 3. What is happening around the world .......................................................................... 54 3.1 The surveys ................................................................................................................. 54 3.2 The Taxonomy ........................................................................................................... 61 4 The first investigation: cyberbullying among Italian students...................................... 70 4.1 The questionnaire ...................................................................................................... 71 4.2 The sample ................................................................................................................. 71 4.3 The results .................................................................................................................. 72 4.4 The first conclusions ................................................................................................ 80 5 The second investigation: cyberbullying behind frontiers ............................................ 82 5.1 The sample ....................................................................................................................... 82 5.2 The questionnaire ............................................................................................................ 85 5.3 The overall situation ................................................................................................. 86 5.3.1 ICT ....................................................................................................................... 86 5.3.2 Cyberbullying ...................................................................................................... 87 5.4 Are you concerned? .................................................................................................. 93 5.5 The hurt part ............................................................................................................ 100 2 Università di Milano-Bicocca – Progetto QUA_SI, Dottorato in Società dell’Informazione A. A. 2010/11 Tesi di Dottorato di Giulia Mura: “Cyberbullying behind frontiers” 5.6 The situation nation by nation: ................................................................................... 109 5.6.1 Brazil .................................................................................................................. 109 5.6.2 Colombia ........................................................................................................... 117 5.6.3 India ................................................................................................................... 124 5.6.4 Italy .................................................................................................................... 131 5.6.5 Turkey............................................................................................................... 142 5.7 International predictors of cyberbullying ............................................................. 149 6 Conclusions ....................................................................................................................... 155 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 160 Appendix 1 The questionnaire .......................................................................................... 173 3 Università di Milano-Bicocca – Progetto QUA_SI, Dottorato in Società dell’Informazione A. A. 2010/11 Tesi di Dottorato di Giulia Mura: “Cyberbullying behind frontiers” Introduction In the 2008/2009 academic year the University of Milano-Bicocca conducted a project aimed at teaching pre-teens and teens about conflict resolution. A total of 9 schools and about 400 students were involved and received training on the emotions and the communication uniqueness of conflict relationships. The main idea guiding the project was that the ability to positively deal with conflicts, without denying them but at the same time avoiding their escalation and possibly violent outcomes, is extremely useful yet not widespread among adolescents. The training of the students was preceded and followed by a research phase that allowed the collection of information on the more widespread conflict representations and dynamics among the student population. Along with the “traditional” conflicts among peers, with the families or even with the educators, a consistent part of the teens reported the occurrence of conflicts involving the use of mobile phones and Internet. The questionnaire submitted allowed to get a quantitative idea of the diffusion of this kind of conflict, and through the interaction with the students and their teachers these data found confirmation in the number of stories that were spontaneously reported every time the subject was approached: a high school girl forced to change school after a “hate-campaign” accusing her of being too compliant with the professors was started against her via Facebook; a pre-teen humiliated by the online poll launched by his schoolmates and asking to express an opinion on his presumed homosexuality; a girl arriving at school one morning to find her MSN private conversation with a supposed girlfriend printed out, photocopied and distributed at the school entrance in the morning… The narrated episodes spaced from the more serious and painful ones to the funnier ones, but they all confirmed the pervasiveness of these kinds of phenomena. What is clear by now is that new technologies have become an integral part of the lives of young people, but in recent years, their functions have changed considerably. For instance, whereas in the 90s they used the Internet primarily for entertainment (Valkenburg and Soeters, 2001), at present they predominantly use it for interpersonal communication (Gross, 2004; Lenhart, Madden, and Hitlin, 2005), with all the benefits and dangers this brings. As it is not possible to make the virtual world completely safe, it is necessary to build children’s resilience to the material to which they may be exposed and help build their confidence and skills to manage both the tools and the situations of the Information Society. The results of the research carried out during the project “To grow, learning how to manage conflicts” 1 became the first step of a wider, international study carried out with the collaboration of public and private institutions, involving approximately 1400 students from five countries, and trying to make a contribution to the body of research that is rapidly developing on the subjects of adolescent uses and misuses of ICT. The 1 The main results of this intervention have been resented at the 2010 World Conference on Educational Sciences and published in the conference proceedings . Mura, G., Bonsignore, V., Diamantini, D., (2010). Conflict management among secondary school students, Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2(2), p.2402-2408 4 Università di Milano-Bicocca – Progetto QUA_SI, Dottorato in Società dell’Informazione A. A. 2010/11 Tesi di Dottorato di Giulia Mura: “Cyberbullying behind frontiers” collaboration with the Universidade Federal Fluminense of Rio de Janeiro, the Universidad de La Sabana of Bogotà, the Middle East Technical University of Ankara as well as the support provided