Abstract

Attending to Difference in Indigenous People's Experiences of Cyberbullying: Toward a Research Agenda

Highlights

  • Intentional aggressive behaviors facilitated by digital technology platforms, cyberbullying has emerged as one of the most prominent forms of digitally mediated harm

  • We argue that the standardization of scholarly approaches to cyberbullying is delimiting its capacity to attend to social difference in online conflict; and we join calls for more theoretically rigorous, targeted, difference-sensitive studies into bullying

  • We build on a literature review we were commissioned to produce by the Aboriginal Health & Medical Research Council of New South Wales, in which we argue that cyberbullying studies have – so far – failed to adequately engage with the cultural and political contexts in which Indigenous people are embedded through online conflict

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Summary

Introduction

While new social technologies bring many benefits, they “offer powerful, yet potentially damaging ways for young people to communicate and respond” (Nilan, Burgess, Hobbs, Threadgold, & Alexander, 2015, p. 2). On the other hand, cyberbullying researchers have tended to overlook important markers of social difference, generally conducting large-scale quantitative research that assumes a homogeneous, normalized, white subject; or, at best, differentiating participants only by age and binary sex This insensitivity to difference is evident in the absence of nuanced accounts of Indigenous people’s experiences of cyberbullying, both in Australia and globally (Carlson & Frazer, 2018b). They have brought great benefits, such as overcoming difficulties in living across geographically distant communities, sustaining informal networks of care and support, and connecting with crucial knowledge, events, and opportunities Researchers have shown these technologies are used in highly culturally specific ways, with a clear continuity between offline and online cultures (Carlson & Frazer, 2015). Understanding cyberbullying as a discursive formation always embedded within a social, cultural, and political milieu, this chapter extends critical approaches to cyberbullying research and advances a politically and culturally nuanced approach to understanding cyberbullying

Major Trends in Cyberbullying Research
Critiques of the Dominant Approach
The Cultural Context of Cyberbullying
The Political Context of Cyberbullying
Findings
Toward a Research Agenda
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