Mobile Social Cyberbullying: Why are Keyboard Warriors Raging?

Abstract

ABSTRACT Cyberbullying on social media has become a serious matter and is the most rampant form of bullying among students nowadays. Accordingly, this study examines mobile social cyberbullying perpetration, a new form of cyberbullying perpetration that is conducted over mobile social media, through the theoretical lenses of Barlett and Gentile Cyberbullying Model (BGCM) and Mobile Technology Acceptance Model (MTAM). The Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling analysis was performed on the 489 samples gathered from university students in order to obtain inferential statistics. Perceived anonymity and belief in the irrelevance of muscularity from the BGCM are positively related to mobile usefulness and mobile ease of use from the MTAM, while all of them are reported to have a positive association with the positive cyberbullying attitudes, which ultimately explain mobile social cyberbullying perpetration. From the results, it is ascertained that the well-founded integrated model has made a novel contribution toward the current literature of cyberbullying perpetration, particularly the rarely studied mobile social cyberbullying perpetration. Several suggestions on reducing the mobile social cyberbullying perpetration are then made to the practitioners, especially the government policymakers and mobile social media service providers.