Cyberbullying, conflict management or just messing? Teenage girls’ understandings and experiences of gender, friendship, and conflict on Facebook in an Irish second-level school

"This study explores how friendship, conflict, and bullying are experienced and understood by Irish teenage girls in relation to Facebook. Although it began as a broader study of girls and cyberbullying, it became clear that most participants had limited first-hand experience of extreme cyberbullying. While their accounts of the latter are valuable and are discussed in this article, the girls had significantly more to say about friendships, conflict between friends and the central role that Facebook played in the frequently precarious management of both. In response to this, the focus of the study shifted to Facebook and to exploring its role in the dynamics of friendship and conflict"