Cyberbullying, fear and silence : from bystanders to cyber-samaritans

In the last decade, the media all over the world have covered the stories of teens who committed suicide or suffered severe harm following periods of online harassment. Cyberbullying statistics of 2014 are alarming. Only last year, 52 percent of young people reported being cyberbullied, 11 percent reported embarrassing or damaging photographs taken without their knowledge or consent. 55 percent of teenagers who use social media have witnessed bullying via that medium.1 On the Internet every information may become a permanent record, following the users who were not aware of the consequences of their ‘click’ when they shared a photo or posted a text. The aim of the chapter is to demonstrate how academic research findings can have practical implications for prevention and intervention programs designed by marketing practitioners, foundations and organizations that aim to reduce online harassment, through various campaigns worldwide, which remain the focus of the study. The first part of the chapter offers (1) an overview of risky online behaviours related to bullying, the nature of (2) online tortures, (3) cyberbullies, (4) their victims and (5) limitless audience, with special emphasis on (6) the witness-bystander’s role in escalating or reducing the abuse, to demonstrate the recent (7) anti-cyberbullying campaigns, launched in Europe, North and South America, which aim to transform silent Bystanders into Cyber-Samaritans. Content analysis of anti-cyberbullying posters and commercials launched in the last decade, shows the shift of emphasis: from 1. bully-focused campaigns, through 2. victim-focused advertisements, to 3. bystander-focused efforts, aimed at developing dissenting communication models and encouraging bystander intervention. Given the growing number of cyberbullied, and inadvertent witnesses of online abuse and hate speech, every effort to make the Internet safer, or at least a less threatening space, is worth sharing.