Cyberbullying among Italian students: an explorative study of bullying through new technologies and its psychological impact.

CYBERBULLYING AMONG ITALIAN STUDENTS: AN EXPLORATIVE STUDY OF BULLYING THROUGH NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND ITS PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT. Genta M. Luisa, Brighi Antonella, Guarini Annalisa Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Italy Cyberbullying is a repeated intentional attack through Internet and or other electronic technologies (Patchin e Hinduja, 2006). Although Internet is a widely used tool for promoting socialization among young adolescents, in economically advanced countries is reported a remarkable use of it as an offending and aggressive tool. Through the net many adolescents receive threats, embarrassing video are shared in order to humiliate someone, isolation or open attacks toward some members are also reported. Our research aims at investigating the peculiar feature of cyberbullying in the Italian context, comparing it with traditional physical or relational “face-to-face”bullying, since the new media such as the electronic messages and videos create new environment where the acquired knowledge on bullying must be considered from a different perspective. A particular issue to be explored are the psychological correlates of the bullying action on the victims: very few researches explore, in fact, the possible effects of a de-syncronized relationship between the bully and the victim, and the peculiar context where the bully does not receive any direct emotional feedback from his victim, as it happens in the cyberg context. Our research will report data from schools in central Italy (N=500), concerning the distribution of traditional and cyberbullying through a questionnaire-based methodology. In particular, we’ll focus on the different perceived psychological effects of the two forms of bullying, with an emphasis on those students which describe theirselves as victims. Also the relationship between psychological effects and personality dimensions such as loneliness and self-esteem will be explored and discussed