Browsing by Author "Jokinen, Oona"

Objectives. The goal of this study is to examine sixth-graders perceptions of cyberbullying. The aim is to investigate young people's perceptions of the forms, causes and objectives of cyberbullying. In addition, the study aims to find out who are the cyberbullies, who are cyberbullied and how to intervene in cyberbullying. The studies of cyberbullying have been increasing in the 21st century. However, the phenomenon of cyberbullying is changing as technology equipment and social media applications evolve. Cyberbullying is also today one of the factors impacting the health of young people and it is likely to become more significant factor as the technology develops. Cyberbullying is defined in the same way as traditional face-to-face bullying, but the bullying takes place online through smart devices. The environment in which the bullying takes place brings many new characteristics to bullying. Methods. At the time of the study, the subjects were sixth-graders in a grade school at Helsinki. In the study there were fourteen research subjects. The research data was gathered by interviewing research subjects with a semi-structured interview. The interviews were then transcribed into textual form and analyzed by using theoretical based content analysis. The analysis frame was intentionally made loose so that useful material outside of the frame could be brought up in the study. These materials outside the frame followed the principles of the data-based content analysis. Results and conclusions. According to this study, the sixth graders have a clear understanding of cyberbullying and they identify the most common environments and characteristics of cyberbullying. The results of the study were mainly in line with the results of previous studies on cyberbullying. However, the effect of anonymity in the experience of bullying was different from previous investigations. The young people in this study felt that the anonymity of the bully reduced the severity of bullying. The surprising research results was that the young people were indifferent towards cyberbullying. As a new result, this study showed that disputes can be escalated into cyberbullying.