Towards a Communication-Based Approach to Cyber-Bullying

Cyber-bullying, or the repeated (mis)use of technology to harass, intimidate, or terrorize another person (Franek, 2004), is a growing problem among adolescents and teenagers in schools. Although cyberbullying inherently implicates important aspects of the communication process, scholars interested in computer-mediated communication have been slow to investigate this phenomenon. This chapter presents an initial effort to document this phenomenon from a communication-based perspective and offers a theoretical foundation for its examination. In so doing, the present chapter provides a review of how the concept of bullying has been traditionally been understood, contextualizes bullying within a mediated context, discusses existing research on cyber-bullies and victims, and applies existing theoretical approaches to understand the motivation behind and effects of cyber-bullying