Summary

This blog talks about how cyberbullying is often under-discussed in relation to higher ed settings, but remains a pervasive issue affecting students and staff. It offers advice on identifying and tackling it through cultural change.

The key words that come up from a Google search into cyber-bullying are children, young people, teenagers, UNICEF and school. This reflects the majority of content around cyber-bullying and supporting victims of it, which remains a subject primarily discussed in relation to schoolchildren.

Once children leave school, and enter universities and workplaces, this pervasive social dynamic and problem continues to affect their lives, albeit in ways that are less discussed. To combat this lack of popular discussion, the Digital Safety Service have selected ‘cyber-bullying’ as the theme for this month’s content. Starting off with this article, we’ll be discussing the main forms of it, and strategies for responding to different types of attacks. The community at the University of Edinburgh should be a supportive, friendly and inclusive space for all – so we are here to champion that cause and empower everyone to speak up on behaviours against it.

The following is a list of common forms of cyber-bullying:

Flaming – sending rude messages about the victim to them privately or in a public group.
Online harassment – sending offensive messages.
Cyber-stalking – sending threatening/monitoring messages.
Denigration – untrue messages about victim sent to others.
Masquerading – pretends to be someone else and sends rude messages/threats.
Trickery and outing – trick someone into sending private/sensitive info which you then send to others.
Exclusion – leaving someone out of an online group

Strategies to combat these behaviours when they are happening and support victims:

Report the cyber-bullying incident.

Some platforms enable you to report incidents to moderators and content checkers, to ensure that abusive content is removed from online spaces.

Be an upstander: someone who sees the bullying and positively intervenes or interrupts to stop it.

There are many different ways you can be an upstander when you witness a cyber-bullying incident, including asking questions to the bully, using jokes to redirect the conversation and focus away from the victim, let the bully know that you do not agree with their words or behaviour. Challenging comments in gaming chats that are not directed to particular people but still contain abusive messaging can be an example of incorporating upstander behaviour into your everyday life.

This article from the Australian eSafety Commissioner includes a few more ways to be an effective online upstander.

How to be an upstander | eSafety Commissioner

Tell someone that you are experiencing this issue and that it is affecting your mental health.

At the University, we offer services such as the Student Advisor Support, Report + Support, the EUSA Advice Place, and the Wellbeing Service among others. The links for these can be found below.

Support at the University

Student Advisor support:

Your Student Adviser | The University of Edinburgh

Report and Support:

Report + Support – Report + Support – The University of Edinburgh

EUSA Advice Place:

Edinburgh University Students’ Association

Wellbeing Service:

Wellbeing services | The University of Edinburgh

Strategies to ensure these behaviours do not happen in our community:

Remember that the digital world is composed of humans – you are interacting with people first, and foremost, despite through an online channel.
Consider your digital footprint. Everything you contribute to the internet exists forever, with deleted files very rarely being properly deleted. How would you feel if a future employer saw your post? Be careful with how you build your online identity, all the way down to the comments you make.
Remember the values of the University of Edinburgh: ambition, curiosity, integrity, collaboration and kindness. Do your comments align? You might want to reconsider communications with internal and external actors to the University if not.
Keep discussions intellectual. Resorting to personal attacks, assumptions and hateful comments when debating issues. Target your criticism at the substance of the comment rather than the poster.

Thank you for reading this article! Hope you found some useful tips within it.

⚡️ UoE DIGITAL SKILLS ⚡️ (@uoedigiskills) • Instagram photos and videos

Check out the Digital Safety, Citizenship and Wellbeing hub for more information!

Digital Safety, Wellbeing and Citizenship | Information Services