Prevalence

I found a scholarly all about cyberbullying. I found the article from the Texas A&M Library website. I determined that it was a scholarly article becasue this article comes from The Canadian Journal of School Pyschology.

This article is about cyberbullying and its prevalence among different ages and genders of kids. This data was collected by picking kids in different middle school and giving them a questonnaire. From this reseach it was determeined that being called names, having rumors apread and having another person pretend ot be them online were the top ways of cyberbullying that occurred. This was surprising to me since people seemed to be more concerned with sexual harrassment and those types of things happeneing online. It also shows that girls were more likely to have been victims or bullies than boys. This research also determined that kids in 7th grade are more likely to be a victim or a bully.
This article is very informative and well written. The author clearly knows alot about the information and the rehortic appeals mostly to logos because of the article's educational tone.

http://cjs.sagepub.com.lib-ezproxy.tamu.edu:2048/content/26/1/44.full.pdf+html

Can Laws Be Made?

I wanted to looked further into laws that are being made about cyberbullying in Texas. I was wondering if laws even can be made against cyberbullying because the Internet is the main source of cyberbullying and it is such a big place,it would be hard ot enforce laws. I found a few laws made about cyberbullying in Texas.

The first law is requiring that the Texas School Safety Center make programs that address and can respond better to incidents of cyberbullying. Another law that will be enacted in 2012-2013 is requiring schools to better address cyberbullying. This includes parent notification, conselling and protecting of the children that admit to have been bullied. Another law will allow the bully to be transferred to anopther classroom, away from the victim. Another law requires that school have a intervention and prevention program, which will keep watch on potenital suicide victims and keep watch on any victims.

These laws seem like they will make an impact. I think that starting at school is the best way to go about cyberbullying. I am not sure there is any other way to go about it since in Internet is so big and it would be hard to enforce any laws. I also this that raising awareness in schools would help the problem too.

http://www.bullypolice.org/tx_law.html

The Past versus The Present

I found an article about statistics about cyberbullying then and now. I was really interested to see if cybrbullying increased in the recent years. The graph I found compares many statistics. The ones I focused on was the percentage of lifetime vinctims in one year comapred to another. The graph shows that in 2004 and 2005 the percent of lifetime vicrims was very high. Then from 2007-2010 the percetnage drops and stays sonsistent. I was surprised with these statistics. I thought since the Internet and technology were such a big part in everyone's life that the statistics would increase as the years went on. I do not really understand how it decreased in the past few years compared to years before, but it does seem like a good thing. Mabe the percetnage will keep decreasing as time goes on.

http://www.cyberbullying.us/research.php

Should Laws Be Made?

I found an article that shows both argues for and against making laws against cyberbullying. As we know there have been many suicide and other emotionally harmful effects done to these kids affected by cyberbullying. We will look mainly at the arguements for a law against cyberbullying.

One claim made by this article is that cyberbullying is more harmful than in-person bullying.
There was one piece of evidence that really stood out to me and in my opinion was a good peice of evidence. This evidence stated that 35% of teens have been harrassed on the Internet in the past year. This is a really scary thought.
The warrant is that cyberbullying is harmful to kids and many kids are victims of cyberbullying.

I think there should be a law against cyberbullying, but I understand that it would be hard to enforce this law. The Internet is a huge plcae and would be hard to enforce laws on this subject.

http://nakedlaw.avvo.com/2010/10/can-cyber-bullying-be-punished-before-its-too-late/

Recognized Nationally

The other day when I was flipping through the channels and saw something about cyberbullying on Anderson 360. I was so amazed and tried to look it up to find out what it was all about, but then I stubbled on a new national campaign that I heard about on Anderson 360, and wanted to know more.

This new campaign is called the NO BULL campaign. It is the nation's largest campaign against cyberbullying. This campaign encourages middle school and high school kids to make anti-bullying videos and put them up on the NO BULL campaign website. After I read this I thought it is a good idea, but what is the incentive for doing this? As i kept reading, there is a red carpet award ceremony in California, that will be aired on national television for the winners.

This campaign may seem like it will not get alot of followers, but it is being offered to millions of kids all over America. This campaign has also partnered up with many organizations such as the National Collaboration for Youth Boys and Girls Clubs of America. This campaign seems like it will go for. I will keep you updated on anything else I find on this NO BULL campaign.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/nations-largest-campaign-against-cyberbullying-is-launched-teens-are-challenged-to-find-solutions-to-these-attacks-2011-10-04

What Else Can We Do To Stop It?

I looked around online for blogs that are about the same topic as mine, and I found a few. Most of the ones that popped up were from news blogs, but I wanted something a little more interesting. Here are the two I found most interesting.

The first blog I found is about law enforcement officers and their responses to cyberbullying. In the blog is talked about how many of the officers encounter cyberbullying cases, but are not sure what to do about it. In the blog, it was trying to persudae officers to be creative, and think of new ways to try and stop cyberbullying. It also stated that one of the problems officers are having is that they may not be familiar enough with the mediums kids are using for cyberbullying.

The other blog I found was a little less formal. This blog was about cyberbullying of adults, which I thought was interesting. It was asking people whether they would stand up against the bully or just turn and walk away. I thought this was a good point.

The first article uses different statistics and stories from actual law enforcement officers to try and make the audience think about a better solution to the cyberbullying problem. It also gives suggestions about talking to kids and becoming more familiar with the mediums bullies use. I think that was a good way of convincing people to think more about cyberbullying and think more about a way to try and stop it.

The second article mainly brings up alot of questions about cyberbullying. Not only does the author ask alot of thought provoking questions, these questions open up your mind ot think about even more questions and possible solutions to this problem of cyberbullying.

Make It Stop!

After looking up so many sad stories about kids who have committed suicide or became depressed over cyberbullying it got me thinking. Are there laws or policies against cyerbullying?

One website categorized it in three categories Cyberbulling, Cyberstalking and Cyberharrassment.  Cyberbullying and cyberharassment in this context were used interchangably, which makes sense. What does not make sense to me is that they have made laws pertaining to each different form. I looked into cyberbullying and the description of the law basically claimed that officials are monitoring kids at school and kids will be disciplined if they are caught cyberbullying someone on school grounds, and they claim to one day be able to monitor and punish kids off-campus as well. I am not sure how they will go about this, but I hope they do.

I then looked into Texas specifically and our laws against cyberbullying, this is where it got interesting. Scrolling down the page they listed all the states in America and listed their laws or policies against either cyberstalking, cyberbullying, or cyberharrassment, or any combination of the three. Once I got to Texas I noticed that we only have a law against cyberharrassment, which brings me back to the case of cyberbullying and cyberharrassment being interchangable. It makes sense through a definition stand point, but since these words are interchangable how can there be separate laws about them? I will definatley look more in depth about these separate laws later in my research.

http://www.ncsl.org/default.aspx?tabid=13495

The Sad Truth

Here is the picture I chose for cyber bullying. Clearly this picture is targeting a young audience in the hopes to stop cyber bullying. I think this is a great ad because it is making a great point. We all know that cyber bullying involves harassing someone or embarrassing them online, through text, twitter anything, but I like how it also includes that laughing or even not stopping it means you are a part of it too, which I think is an aspect no one really thinks of as cyber bullying.
This ad is evoking a sense of guilt almost because we all know at some point we have laughed at something whether it being an embarrassing comment or picture on Face book, but we never stop to think how this could hurt the person that it a part of it.
I really like how the ad makes it look like you are looking straight at a computer screen, since we are dealing with cyber bullying. The diagonal lines and kind of fuzzy imagery really makes it seem like it was taken right from someone’s computer. The font also looks very much computerized which adds to the computer screen look. The picture however is a little disturbing though. It really conveys the message of everyone being able to see something online (all the kids in the screen), and how it can cause someone to potentially take their life because everyone can see whatever was online (the girl looking asleep).
I really like this ad because it really makes a statement about cyber bullying that people do not primarily think of. The picture is a little disturbing, but it goes with what the message is saying, which is a sad and horrible thing to happen to someone just because of cyber bullying.

Statistics and News Reports

As I mentioned before, cyber bullying is becoming a huge issue in this day and age. Cyber bulling is at an all time high right now amongst teens and is having a profound effect on these kids every day. 97% of middle school kids have cyber bullied some in their young life and 42% of all children have been cyber bullied. These statistics are ridiculous and terrifying. There have also been reports of teen suicides due to cyber bulling.

One teen who committed suicide early this year, cops say cyber bullying is to blame. Kids who taunted the teen continued to bash her on her web page even after her death. However, teens are not fully to blame for cyber bullying sometimes adults are to blame too. One of the most infamous cases of cyber bullying is the suicide of a teen girl because of the mom of a classmate. This mom created a fake profile and slandered the teen girl’s name which eventually led her to suicide. Another case of adult cyber bullying is from the reality television show The Real Housewives of New York. In the show, one woman’s husband slanders another woman via twitter, which may seem harmless, but since they are television stars they have hundreds of twitter followers. Even a simple tweet can really hurt someone’s feelings and reputation.  I know it may seem odd to be using this show as an example, but it just goes to show how far cyber bullying has taken off in the recent years.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=3882520&page=1
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/29/earlyshow/main6343077.shtml
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20083781-501465.html

Cyber bullying

Online safety is a big concern in this day and age. People have learned to hack, steal, even bully online. Internet safety is something everyone should be concerned with. Cyber bullying is a topic that has been coming up a lot lately. TV movies, commercials and legislation have been bringing awareness to the issue. Cyber bullying is the use of the internet and related technologies to harm other people, in a deliberate, repeated, and hostile manner. The reason this is becoming more prevalent in society is the much more frequent use of the internet and social networks, such as Facebook and twitter. Even though this type of bullying may not be physical in any way, it is very emotional and psychological. Not to mention that this type of bullying can be seen by anyone on the web as opposed to just the school yard full of kids.

I believe that cyber bullying is a horrible act to commit and I am glad that this issue is becoming more public. I am unsure how this issue can be solved, but raising awareness will definitely help. I know that Facebook is a big part in every young person’s life right now and even the older and younger generations are being introduced to Facebook, which is why I feel that cyber bullying can really hurt. Someone hacking or posting a mean comment on someone’s Facebook can really affect that person because all your friends and even family can read that, which is where the emotional and psychological damage of cyber bullying can come from.