As I start to research and think about cyber-bullying, I break it down to think of the human experience as happiness and self-worth and how the internet can affect that. Specifically, I started to study and research instances of people taking bullying online and the effects that can have on people’s self-esteem.
To begin, I started with basic online searches of the definition of “cyber-bullying.” Naturally, the first page that I look at is Wikipedia. Their basic definition is “the use of the Internet and related technologies to harm other people in a deliberate, repeated, and hostile manner.”
Wikipedia also led me to Billy Belsey’s website. He is the man credited with creating the first definition of cyber-bullying: “"Cyberbullying involves the use of information and communication technologies to support deliberate, repeated, and hostile behaviour by an individual or group, that is intended to harm others."
This website has examples of the forms that cyber-bullying might take. While I mentioned “bullying online” above, Belsey breaks it down into how cyber-bullying can be done through e-mail, Instant Messaging (IM), websites, chat rooms, etc. Another look at bullying through electronics is through text messaging. It isn’t necessarily on the Internet, but since most cellphones these days do have access to the web, it all seems connected.
I plan to research and blog more about cyber-bullying and the facts that many different organizations have researched and put on the Internet and in books. Currently my central question is simply: How does the Internet contribute to bullying?
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