Cyberbullying, conflict management or just messing? Teenage girls’ understandings and experiences of gender, friendship, and conflict on Facebook in an Irish second-level school
Keywords
cyberbullying
gender
girls
conflict
friendship
facebook
Post-feminism
Publication details
| DOI: | 10.1080/14680777.2015.1137959 |
| Issued: | 2016 |
| Language: | English |
| Volume: | 16 |
| Issue: | 5 |
| Start Page: | 805 |
| End Page: | 821 |
| Editors: | |
| Authors: | Ging D.; O'Higgins Norman J. |
| Type: | Journal article |
| Journal: | Feminist Media Studies |
| Publisher: | Informa UK Limited |
| Sample: | In recent years, there have been growing concerns worldwide about young people’s safety online, much of which focuses on social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram. Moral panics about sexting and cyberbullying have constructed public discourses about social media as dangerous to adolescents’ safety and relationships. In the academic literature, there are conflicting perspectives on the nature of online relationships, behaviour, and risks, and on the causes and nature of cyberbullying. Less attention is paid—in both public and academic debates—to the role played by gender in online aggression, in spite of the fact that existing scholarship demonstrates that it is an important factor in the dynamics of young people’s online friendships and conflicts. This article presents the findings of an empirical, qualitative and quantitative study of teenage girls’ experiences and understandings of online friendship, conflict, and bullying in an Irish, single-sex secondary school. |
Abstract
Outcome
The articles identifies the role that both gender and social media, specifically Facebook, play in the nature of online friendships, conflict, bullying, and conflict resolution among girls. The findings indicate that the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in close-knit friendship groups or cliques can be a considerable source of anxiety for girls.
The study also indicates that girls in this study were inclined to respond to hurtful comments by ignoring or deleting them. "This suggests that the most urgent problem is not with social media literacy or lack of awareness of the dangers of online communication but rather with a lack of empowerment to confront aggressors, discuss conflict openly with friends, or report hurtful incidents"