CYBERBULLYING – THE REGULATION OF BEHAVIOUR THROUGH LANGUAGE
Coordination: Ana Margarida Veiga Simão (Faculty of Psychology, University of Lisbon)
Research Team: Members of the Faculty of Psychology, University of Lisbon (Ana Margarida Veiga Simão, Paula Costa Ferreira, Paula Paulino, Adelina Lopes da Silva, Sidclay Bezerra de Souza and Sofia Mateus Francisco); Members of the Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering, Research and Development in Lisbon (Isabel Trancoso, Luísa Coheur, Ricardo Daniel Marques Ribeiro, João Paulo Carvalho and Hugo Rosa); Member of the Altice Labs (Jorge Teixeira).
Scientific Domain: Educational Psychology
Abstract:
The Faculty of Psychology of the University of Lisbon along with INESCID Technical University have joined forces to develop a project that includes the development of an application that can help adolescents regulate their behavior in situations of cyberbullying through language. We perceive the regulation of behavior through language as the development of self-instruction strategies involving self-questioning, verbal communication strategies, and self-assertive behaviors and interpersonal problem solving. Cyberbullying has been studied through a perspective of diagnostic evaluation. However, an intervention type assessment taking into account a detailed analysis of the language used in real situations of cyberbullying should be considered so that there is a decrease in the incidence of the phenomenon. We believe that from a greater understanding of how the different participants interact through language in cyberbullying situations, we can develop an instrument that can encourage adolescents to reevaluate their language and behavior towards this type of online occurrences. Thus, we propose to develop an application based on the principles of self-regulation of behavior and anchored in several studies that will be used to develop and test the population. With this application, we propose to intervene in the phenomenon of cyberbullying in terms of incidence, and the development of adolescents' self-instruction strategies, verbal communication strategies, and self-assertive behavior of adolescents.
Keywords: cyberbullying, self-regulation of behavior, self-instruction, cybernetic protocol self-instruction.
Start: 2016
End: 2019
Funding Agency: Project Funded by Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology - FCT (PTDC/MHC/-PED/3297/2014).
BYSTANDER EFFECT IN CYBERBULLYING
Research: Paula da Costa Ferreira
Supervisors: Ana Margarida Veiga Simão (Faculty of Psychology, University of Lisbon) and Ana Paiva (INESC-ID - Instituto Superior Técnico)
Scientific Domain: Educational Psychology
Abstract:
The aim of this investigation is to understand the bystander effect in cyberbullying and promote pro-social behavior amongst adolescents. In order to reach these objectives, we propose to study what adolescents consider a cyberbullying incident, whether they intervene as bystanders of the incident, how and why they intervene, and lastly, how the presence of other bystanders may influence their behavior, through qualitative and quantitative data gathering and analysis techniques, such as a questionnaire, an interview and authentic online text content analysis. With the data we gather, we propose to create and evaluate an interactive computer application which enables students to participate as bystanders of hypothetical cyberbullying incidents to further understand how the bystander effect occurs in cyberbullying, as well as to promote pro-social behavior in adolescents. We expect this investigation to contribute to research and practice by presenting a technological resource that promotes adolescents’ prosocial behavior as bystanders of cyberbullying.
Keywords: cyberbullying, bystanders, bystanders effect, pro-social behavior.
Start: January of 2016
End: December of 2019
Funding Agency: Project Funded by Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology - FCT (SFRH/BPD/110695/2015)
Contactos: paula.costa.ferreira@gmail.com