Cyberbullying: 9 different modalities
The cameras or video of any smartphone are sufficient means to record or photograph a partner in intimate or compromised situations, such as when in the shower or in the bathroom. Later they are distributed among a group of friends to mock and befame the poor victim, they even get to hang on the Internet. We talk about cyberbullying, a form of harassment on the Internet that increasingly adopts new forms and has more different modalities.
Harass with new technologies
The widespread use of mobile telephony and the Internet has given rise to new modes of bullying through new technologies or cyberbullying. Bullying through SMS, anonymous emails or defamatory websites is becoming more common and has become one of the preferred weapons for bullies when it comes to intimidating their peers. The victims of cyberbullying are now doubly disturbed: within the class and outside of it.
Unlike what happens in the real world, in the digital world you do not need to be very strong or have the support of a gang to harass a partner, so anyone can exercise this type of aggression if you have the technology . In our country, one in five children declare that they have ever threatened or insulted any of their classmates using the digital environment. Everything indicates that This type of harassment is on the rise as UNESCO warns and now it is also typified as a crime.
9 modalities of cyberbullying
The forms that cyberbullying adopts are very varied and are only limited by the technological expertise and imagination of the child molesters. Some concrete examples of the modalities of cyberbullying could be the following:
1. Hang a compromised image on the Internet (real or made by photomontages), sensitive data, things that can harm or embarrass the victim and make it known in their relationship environment.
2. Enlist the victim, with photo included, in a website where it is about voting for the ugliest person, the least intelligent person ... and charging him with "points" or "votes" so that he appears in the first places.
3. Create a false profile or space on behalf of the victim, where certain personal events, explicit demands of sexual contacts, etc. are written as confessions in the first person.
4. Leave offensive comments in forums or participate aggressively in chats posing as the victim so that the reactions are subsequently directed to those who have suffered personality theft.
5. Register the email address in certain places so that later it is a victim of spam, of contacts with strangers ...
6. Usurp your email key for, in addition to changing it so that its legitimate owner can not consult it, read the messages that come to your mailbox violating your privacy.
7. Provoke the victim in web services, that have a person responsible for monitoring or moderating what happens there (chats, online games, virtual communities ...) to get a violent reaction that, once denounced or evidenced, supposes the exclusion of who really had been the victim.
8. Circulate rumors in which the victim is assumed to be reprehensible, offensive or disloyal, so that others, without questioning what they read, exercise their own forms of retaliation or harassment.
9. Send threatening messages by e-mail or SMS, persecuting and stalking the victim in the places of the Internet in which they relate in a habitual way provoking a feeling of complete oppression.
The three means of cyberbullying
1. The email. Although it began as one of the most widespread forms of cyberbullying, because it can be used anonymously or with an email account that is foreign to its own, other platforms have usurped the first place. The procedure is simple and although it is possible to detect where the mail came from, the aggressor can rarely be identified. Through it, messages of harassment and punctual threats can be sent, as well as photos of previously registered bullying events, such as chain mails among the comrades motivating to make fun of the victim.
2. The mobile phone. Through anonymous calls made at inopportune times: silent calls or serious threats that include insults, shouts or intimidating messages. In addition to text messages, WhatsApp, images or text on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, video recordings or voice messages.
3. Websites. Without a doubt one of the most harmful. It requires a greater mastery of the TICs, since not only it is necessary to have notions of web design, but also it is necessary to lodge it in Internet without the aggressor can be identified.Generally, most students in the classroom know the site created and humiliate the victim. In these pages you can see photos, videos and defamatory comments towards the attacked child. Also fotologs or mocking polls (for example a "who is the ugliest in the class" vote) have become options for stigmatizing classmates.
Ana Aznar
Advice: Fernando García Fernández. Director of communication. Irabia School (Pamplona)
