UNDERSTANDING AND MITIGATING CYBER-BULLYING: PROMOTING PRO-SOCIAL ONLINE BEHAVIOR FOR YOUTH

• Sponsoring Institution: National Institute of Food and Agriculture
• Project Status: COMPLETE
• Funding Source: HATCH
• Reporting Frequency: Annual
• Accession No.: 0227554
• Project Start Date: Oct 1, 2011
• Project End Date: Sep 30, 2014
• Program Code: [(N/A)]- (N/A)

Recipient Organization
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
(N/A)
ITHACA,NY 14853

Performing Department
Communication

Non Technical Summary
The recent suicides by young victims of cyberbullying have raised national awareness about the seriousness of this new form of aggression and its implications for community development. Not only are the consequences of cyberbullying potentially life-threatening, the media is also full of accounts describing the frustrations parents face in dealing with cyberbullying, and for good reason. Within the last few years, youth have turned to cyberspace to meet and interact with others and to be fully participating members of society (Hinduja & Patchin, 2010). According to a study in 2010, conducted by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 93% of children aged 8 to 18 have computers at home and 66% have cell phones. As of 2009, 73% of teens between the ages of 12 and 17 have been using social networking sites, and 83% of youth between the ages of 14 and 17 have their own profile page. If used appropriately, these new media tools and platforms provide various potential benefits for children, such as practicing a pro-social and harmonious communication manner (Berson et al., 2002), learning about social roles and responsibilities, refining their self-identity (Calvert, 2002), and developing online socialization. However, public concerns have arisen when young media users embrace cyberspace in problematic, deviant ways that could result in societal ills, such as online harassment or so-called cyberbullying, which we define for this project as the willful and repeated use of technology to harass, humiliate, or threaten a specific person through the utilization of electronic media (Hinduja & Patchin, 2011; Patchin & Hinduja, 2006). Information technologies have several features that can make cyberbullying particularly insidious and hurtful. First, digital communication can be difficult to connect with a real identity, and this sense of anonymity can lead young people to engage in anti-social behaviors they would not engage in face-to-face. Second, the copy and paste nature of text-based communication allows private dialogs to be publicized easily and to a wide audience. Third, youth and parents are adapting to transformative patterns of social media use, such as Facebook and texting, with teenagers spending up to 14 hours a day online, according to a recent Pew Internet Report. The present research will seek to understand how prevelant cyberbullying is in New York State, will identify the dynamics that make up cyberbullying, and will attempt to create interventions that reduce the likelihood that cyberbullying will take place.

Animal Health Component

(N/A)

Research Effort Categories

Basic

(N/A)

Applied

(N/A)

Developmental

(N/A)

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
802	6020	3030	10%
802	6020	3070	10%
803	6010	3030	20%
803	6010	3070	10%
803	6020	3030	10%
803	6020	3070	10%
806	6010	3030	10%
806	6010	3070	10%
806	6020	3030	10%

Knowledge Area
806 - Youth Development; 803 - Sociological and Technological Change Affecting Individuals, Families, and Communities; 802 - Human Development and Family Well-Being;

Subject Of Investigation
6010 - Individuals; 6020 - The family and its members;

Field Of Science
3070 - Psychology; 3030 - Information and communication;

Keywords

cyberbullying

Goals / Objectives
The present project aims for three contributions. First, enhancing knowledge and social awareness about cyberbullying could have a far-reaching impact on society. This is especially important given the lack of understanding of how cyberbullying takes place in rural areas, such as New York State. Second, the present project will seek out how to identify patterns associated with cyberbullying. Real cases will be solicited in a follow up study to the survey described above. These cases will be collected and studied to identify patterns of behavior that indicate cyberbulling. Finally, there is currently a dearth of research on interventions for preventing cyberbullying. For example, there is no single study that applies a theoretical framework to determine the causal mechanisms of cyberbullying that can be manipulated to affect the likelihood that cyberbullying will take place. The present work will draw on recent social psychology to implement interventions that will attempt to reduce the likelihood that cyberbullying will actually take place. The specific objectives of this work are three-fold: 1. To assess cyberbullying rates in upstate New York, especially in rural areas given that very little is known about cyberbullying in this population, and to feed this knowledge back to stakeholders. From this initial polling, our goal will be to also collect cases of cyberbullying so that linguistic and networking dynamics can be modeled in an effort to predict when cyberbulling is about to take place. 2. To leverage new research from social psychology and communication research suggesting that subtle cues in the online environment can a) prime pro-social behavior, such as cooperation and b) constrain anti-social behavior, such as deception. The goal of this research is to examine whether these powerful techniques can be applied to the design of social media interfaces to mitigate cyberbullying behavior. 3. To introduce cyberbullying mitigation practices to the community directly via public research talks, workshops with high school students, PTAs, and teachers, and to communicate the findings more broadly via the popular media and involvement in ongoing policy debate. The indented outputs and beneficiaries include, most importantly, the youth who face cyberbullying in the digital age. If the measures are successful, youth should be less likely to engage in or be the victim of cyberbullying. This mitigation will be most powerful and beneficial the more different stakeholders are fully engaged. The designers of social media, and companies that operate them, will benefit from new techniques for mitigating cyberbullying on their technologies. Parents will benefit from the increased awareness of cyberbullying and strategies for effectively dealing with it that will emerge from our workshops and presentations with local PTAs. Educators and policy-makers will benefit from improved understanding of how cyberbullying works in upstate New York, and will benefit from the additional tools the studies will provide for shaping more pro-social youth behavior online

Project Methods
Activity 1 - Upstate New York Survey: the development of items to be included in Cornell's annual Empire State Poll by pilot testing with local communities identified as at risk of cyberbullying. Based on this pilot work, questions will be fielded for three consecutive years to provide longitudinal insight into cyberbullying. Lastly, we will ask participants that indicated that they had experienced cyberbullying to contribute their case to our cyberbullying database for linguistic and network analysis. The Survey Research Institute will provide assistance with fielding the survey. Activity 2 - Primes & Constraints Experiments: beginning in the second year experiments will examine the effect of primes and constraints on aggression. The first set of studies will examine two recently published primes shown to have significant effects on pro-social behavior: 1) the presence of eyes on the screen (Haley & Fessler, 2006), which enhances a sense of surveillance and 2) an oath related to the golden rule (do unto others...), which makes salient moral imperatives (Ariely, 2008). The second set of studies will examine constraints on anti-social behavior (Guillory & Hancock, 2010) that include the publicness and recordability of online behavior. When individuals are made aware that their actions are recorded, public, and traceable, they should be less likely to engage in anti-social behavior. The Social Media Lab at Cornell University will be used to conduct these experiments. Activity 3 - Stakeholder Engagement: This phase will be begin in year 2 and will involve a concerted effort to get the results from the Empire State Poll to relevant New York state stakeholders. Outreach will continue with the development of workshops and presentations and policy engagement based on the findings and design recommendations derived from the studies. The PI has a proven track record in engaging with the community on these kinds of topics, from PTA discussions to engagement with teacher development associations.

Progress 10/01/11 to 09/30/14

Outputs
Target Audience: Both academic and public audiences were reached by our efforts in this period. PI Hancock gave several public talks, including at alumni events, keynote talks and public lectures. The academic audiences targeted included Communication conferences and technology-focused meetings. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? One graduate student received support to collect and analyze social science data, and to write up results. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Primarily by journal publication and book chapters, as well as presentations at annual meetings. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? 1. We conducted an empirical study to examine how often people lie in text messaging, providing some of the first evidence on this topic. We also examined how well people can detect deception in text messaging, discovering that there are low rates of accuracy. 2. We completed a study examining how pro-social primes can affect how much people are willing to disclose on a social network sites. The appearance of certain primes can increase how often people self-disclose sensitive information if that is perceived as the norm for the site. 3. We completed a project examining how deceptive advertising takes place online by examining how advertorials are processed. Advertorials appear to look like editorial writing, but in fact are paid content. The results reveal that people are often tricked into processing these ads less skeptically than typical ads, and have important implications for digital literacy. 4. We finished a project examining how cyber-grooming, in which sexual predators identify victims online and desensitize them to sexual talk, build up trust and eventually try to meet with the victim. Our project showed linguistic patterns consistent with grooming theory in online chat environments.

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2014 Citation: Smith, M., Hancock, J.T., Birnholtz, J., & Reynolds, L. (2014). Everyday Deception or A Few Prolific Liars? The Prevalence of Lies in Text Messaging. Computers in Human Behavior, 41, 220-227.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2015 Citation: Kim, S. & Hancock, J.T. (in press). Cognitive Processing and Persuasive Outcomes in Health Advertorials: The Effect of Advertisement Labeling and Message Structure. Communication Research.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2015 Citation: Black, P., Wollis, M., Woodworth, M. & Hancock, J.T. (in press). A Linguistic Analysis of Grooming Strategies of Online Child Sex Offenders: Implications for our Understanding of Predatory Sexual Behavior in an Increasingly Computer-Mediated World. Child Abuse & Neglect.
• Type: Book Chapters Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2015 Citation: Hancock, J.T. & Guillory, J. (in press). Lies, damned lies and online lies. In S. Sundar (ed.) The Psychology of Communication Technology, Wiley Blackwell.

Progress 10/01/12 to 09/30/13

Outputs
Target Audience: The target audiences reached last year include: 1) the academic communities in communication with presentations at the International Communication Association (London, UK) and in communication technology at CSCW2014 and 2) the alumni community with a talk at the Sigma Pi Delta 100 year anniversary, and 4) the local business community with a talk at the Tompkins County Area Development (TCAD) Board annual meeting. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? For the students involved in this project they have conducted data collection, analysis, and interpretation processes of social scientific research, including learning new kinds of statistical analysis. Graduate students also had the opportunity to train undergruate research assistants on how to code messages. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Yes, the academic community of communication and technology, and also the local business community. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? We will continue to find opportunities to disseminate the research to target communities, especially youth.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The most important accomplishment last year was under goal #2 for advancing our understanding of social primes and how they affect cyberbullying behavior. We completed a project that showed that surveillance primes, such as the presence of eyespots on a computer screen, can affect anti-normative behavior, and that the private vs. public nature of the online context influences how surveillance primes operate in accordance with what is socially normative for public and private communication online.

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2013 Citation: Birnholtz, J., Reynolds, L., Smith, M. Hancock, J.T. (2013). Everyone has to do it: A joint action approach to managing social inattention. Computers in Human Behavior, 29, 2230-2238
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2013 Citation: Spottswood, E. & Hancock, J.T. (2013, June). The eyes have it: How publicness and surveillance primes influence prosoical communication on Facebook. International Communication Association 63rd Annual Conference, London, UK.

Progress 10/01/11 to 09/30/12

Outputs
OUTPUTS: The research from the project were presented in a number of different venues and communities, including general talks to the public, industry talks, and a talk in Washington DC targeting policy makers. I gave two talks at Facebook in the summer of 2012 that discussed social psychological issues related to social media, including cyberbullying, deception, and the association between relationships and health. In October, I spoke at the National Science Foundation as part of the Washington Area Trustworthy Computing Hour (WATCH) seminar series. The most general talk discussing the research was a TEDx talk given in Winnipeg, Canada in Septemberfocusing on the future of lying. The talk has now been seen over 450,000 times. PARTICIPANTS: Individuals. Sunny Kim is a graduate student that has helped with literature review, design studies, and collect data. Jessie Taft is the Social Media Lab manager and has helped with organization functions, such as managing the lab space and schedule, and some help with designing studies and doing literature reviews. Collaborators. Jeremy Birnholtz (Assistant Professor), Lindsay Reynolds (PhD student), Madeline Smith (PhD student) have all worked on the social inattention project by helping design studies, collect data, and analyze and write-up results. Erin Spottswood (PhD student) has helped design studies on priming and behavior, collect data and analyze and writeup the results. Rachel Boochever (undergrad) helped analyze and write up results on psychopaths and social media. TARGET AUDIENCES: The target audiences for this research reached over the reporting period has included the general public, including young people and families, industry, including designers of social media products, and policy makers around online communication and security. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.

Impacts
There were three outcomes from the project this year that changed our understanding of cyberbullying and negative behavior on social media. The first outcome was a study examining how people produce and perceive deception in online communication, such as text messaging. This work advanced our understanding in two important ways. The first was that people tend to be poor at detecting deception in everyday communication online, and that deception related to social inattention, which can often sometimes involve cyberbullying, is particularly difficult to detect. The second was that while social inattention is a frequent part of communication, repeated or intense episodes of inattention can be extremely painful to individuals. The second outcome was a study examining how primes, such as eyespots, can influence people's deceptive behavior in online contexts. This experiment manipulated the ads in Facebook to include either a set of eyes or no-eyes, and we then examined whether this affected people's lying behavior. We found that when faced with a difficult situation, such as when needing to give a friend negative feedback, the eyespots reduced deception and lead participants to be more honest with their friends. This research, though preliminary, has real potential to change people's deceptive behavior. The third outcome involved understanding how psychopaths, who can be extremely destructive interpersonally, can produce distinct linguistic patterns in their social media.

Publications

• Birnholtz, J., Hancock, J., Smith, M., & Reynolds, L. (2012). Understanding unavailability in a world of constant connection. Interactions 19, 32-35.
• Hancock, J.T., Woodworth, M.T, Morrow, R., McGillivray, H., & Boochever, R. (2012). Assessing credibility through text: A preliminary analysis for identifying psychopathy. Forty-Fifth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS45).
• Reynolds, L., Smith, M.E., Birnholtz, J.P., & Hancock, J.T. (2013). Butler lies from both sides: Actions and perceptions of unavailability messaging in texting. Proceedings of the ACM conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2013).