Portugal’s participants are from the University of Coimbra, and join specialists from Cyprus, Spain, Italy, Norway, the UK, Czech Republic and Turkey.
The new tools are the result of research being developed into the topic and include guidelines for students, parents and schools and a videogame to ‘Beat cyberbullying: Embrace safer cyberspace’.
Cyberbullying is defined as using the internet to intimidate and antagonise a person by defaming, insulting or attacking them in a cowardly fashion.
Financed by the EU’s ‘Erasmus+’ programme the project counts on input from Portuguese researchers Armanda Matos and Ana Maria Seixas, both professors of Coimbra University’s Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences (FPCEUC).
On the project’s website it explains: “While new technology has opened a gateway for people to communicate in a positive way across the globe and provides numerous benefits to young people, it has also created a new way- a ‘dark side’- in which people can be bullied and harassed and there is now a demand for something to be done to protect children.”
According to the European Commission, cyberbullying is repeated verbal or psychological harassment carried out by an individual or group against others.
“Cyberbullying occurs most frequently through email, web sites, forums, chat rooms, mobile phone text and picture messages, mobile phone cameras and social networking sites (Facebook, twitter, etc.). In other words, cyberbullying is a new manifestation of traditional bullying in the digital world.
“Today’s children and young people have grown up in this ‘digital world’ that is very different from that of most adults. In fact, they were born digital and we, as parents/teachers/adults have difficulty in understanding these ‘digital natives’. While communication technologies support social activities that allow teenagers to feel free, connected to their peers and experience the enjoyable world, the misuse of this technology can make the teenagers’ life unsafe, full of anxiety, alone and stressfull too, the site continues.
During a first phase of the project, conducted over the past two years, the team of researchers conducted a study among children and teens, aged between nine and 14 years.
“Understanding the perception that this target audience has about the phenomenon of cyberbullying and what they feel needs to be done to prevent and deal with the problem” is the objective of the project, explains Armanda Matos, in quotes sent to the media from Coimbra University.
“Participants in the study said, for example, that they share private information in their social networking profiles, and claim that they need to be educated on the various aspects of the problem, such as training in terms of cyberbullying prevention and on the use of technologies”, says Armanda Matos.
On the other hand, students say “they do not know if their schools have measures to prevent and deal with this new form of violence.”
This is why, according to Armanda Matos, “continuous awareness is needed because cyberbullying has a much wider audience than traditional bullying, can occur 24 hours a day, seven days a week and allows for anonymity (or illusion of anonymity) for those who practice it.”
Resources that the researchers from the eight partner countries came up with aim to “provide basic knowledge, practical advice and guidance to help students, parents and schools to avoid the unwanted results of this phenomenon, which in Portugal presents a prevalence rate of 7.6% of victims”, according to a previous study, also carried out by the FPCEUC, under the coordination of João Amado.
“Through these resources, approaches and strategies to motivate and involve different audiences in the safer use of the Internet and in the fight against cyberbullying are offered,” the FPCEUC summarised.
Coimbra University elaborated that the guides developed within the scope of the project are available in the English version on the BeCyberSafe website, created specifically for the purpose, and can be obtained free of charge at http://www.becybersafe.org/publications/.
The video game, aimed at a younger audience, can be downloaded from http://www.becybersafe.org/becybersafe-game/, and is also available in several languages, including Portuguese.