Summary
Social Media Risks & Opportunities
Topics of the courses:
1. Introduction
2. Experiencing online aggression
3. Prosocial behaviour
4. Witnessing online aggression
5. Online support
6. Celebrity bashing
7. Risky selfie taking and posting
8. Online friendships
9. Parental mediation
10. Body positivity
11. Sexting & cyber dating abuse
, Lecture 2: Experiencing online aggression
RISK
Online aggression/ cyber aggression
= Intentional harm delivered by the use of electronic means to a person or a group of people
irrespective of their age, who perceive(s) such acts as offensive, derogatory, harmful or unwanted.
(Cyber)bulling
= An aggressive, intentional act or behaviour that is carried out by a group or an individual repeatedly
and overtime against a victim who cannot easily defend him- or herself.
Imbalance (online this is hard to define).
Differences traditional bullying (offline) vs. cyberbullying (online):
- Anonymity
- (Not) directly facing the victim
- Time and space
- Reach one person or a large audience
- Spreading and saving harmful content
Examples cyberbullying cases:
- Suicide because of cyber bullying by webcam accident.
- Body shaming of Amalia because people think she’s too fat.
- Body shaming influencers because they are too thin.
There are three roles within online aggression:
- Perpetrators
- Victims
- Bystanders
Dark Triad (Pabian, De Backer & Vandebosch, 2015)
= Dark personalities: those characterised by socially offensive features/characteristics.
- Narcissism
= Extreme self-involvement because you are so focussed on yourself, you sometimes ignore
people around you, you fantasize of success (being famous), you request a lot of attention of your
surroundings, like to be in the spotlight, expect special favours and take advantage of others.
Associated with offline aggression among adolescents.
Narcissist function well in online environments (reason: controllability of self-presentation).
Narcissistic exploitativeness (= sub-construct of narcissism) is associated with cyber aggression
among adolescents.
,- Machiavellianism
= Uses manipulative strategies to reach a certain goal (mostly: power). They think about their
actions, they plan it and don’t do manipulative things. They also think about what they can
achieve with that.
Associated with offline aggression among adolescents.
- Psychopathy
= Being impulsive (in contrast with Machiavellianism), arrogant and insensitive towards the
feelings of others.
Associated with offline aggression among adolescents.
Associated with cyber aggression among adolescents.
There is some overlap between the traits. When studying these in social media, we don’t talk about
the extreme cases. But people who score a bit higher than average.
The Dark Triad study by Pabian, De Backer and Vandebosch (2015) is special because they are the
first to study the association between Dark Triads and cyber-aggression among adolescents
population. Results:
- 1/3 of the participants engaged at least once in the past 3 months in one/more cyber-aggression
activities.
- Only psychopathy was significantly related to cyber aggression (positively related).
- The intensity of Facebook use had a positive effect on online aggression.
Implications/limitations of the study:
- Since personality traits are quite stable in this age group, cyber aggression can be used as an
indicator of psychopathy in adolescents.
Can this be prevented? Social perspective-taking skills have been proven successful in
overcoming egocentrism an antisocial behaviour. Include training of these skills in prevention
programs.
- Short Dark Triad instrument did not allow to investigate sub-constructs of Machiavellianism,
Narcissism and psychopathy.
More recently: New version of Dark Triad = Dark Tetrad, sadism (= taking pleasure from
intentionally hurting or humiliating a human or animal) was added as fourth trait.
- Self-reports are not flawless: social desirable answers.
Theory of Planned Behaviour (Pabian & Vandebosch, 2014)
= A theory which argues that people’s intention to perform a certain behaviour is the best predictor of
their actual behaviour.
Proximal determinants
= Variables that influence behaviours directly (theory of planned behaviour study).
, Distal determinants
= Variables that influence behaviours indirectly (Dark Triad study).
Shortcomings in research of proximal determinants:
- Received few attention in previous research.
- Studied in isolation from other proximal determinants.
Importance of studying them: they can be changed by interventions.
Pabian and Vandebosch (2014) studied whether the theory of planned behaviour is a good framework
for explaining cyberbullying perpetration and which are the underlying beliefs of the attitude,
subjective norm and perceived behavioural control?
The behavioural intention is determined by three belief-based concepts:
- Attitude (A)
= A person’s global affective evaluation of a behaviour.
- Subjective norm (SN)
= The perception of what others think of the behaviour (e.g. social pressure).
- Perceived behavioural control (PBC)
= The perceived ease or difficulty of performing the behaviour (e.g. how likely does a person feel
that particular factors could make it easier/difficult to perform the behaviour).
The more favourable attitude and subjective norm are with respect to a behaviour, and the greater the
perceived behavioural control, the stronger should an individual’s intention be to perform the
behaviour under consideration.
Theoretical model of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB)
Social Media Risks & Opportunities
Topics of the courses:
1. Introduction
2. Experiencing online aggression
3. Prosocial behaviour
4. Witnessing online aggression
5. Online support
6. Celebrity bashing
7. Risky selfie taking and posting
8. Online friendships
9. Parental mediation
10. Body positivity
11. Sexting & cyber dating abuse
, Lecture 2: Experiencing online aggression
RISK
Online aggression/ cyber aggression
= Intentional harm delivered by the use of electronic means to a person or a group of people
irrespective of their age, who perceive(s) such acts as offensive, derogatory, harmful or unwanted.
(Cyber)bulling
= An aggressive, intentional act or behaviour that is carried out by a group or an individual repeatedly
and overtime against a victim who cannot easily defend him- or herself.
Imbalance (online this is hard to define).
Differences traditional bullying (offline) vs. cyberbullying (online):
- Anonymity
- (Not) directly facing the victim
- Time and space
- Reach one person or a large audience
- Spreading and saving harmful content
Examples cyberbullying cases:
- Suicide because of cyber bullying by webcam accident.
- Body shaming of Amalia because people think she’s too fat.
- Body shaming influencers because they are too thin.
There are three roles within online aggression:
- Perpetrators
- Victims
- Bystanders
Dark Triad (Pabian, De Backer & Vandebosch, 2015)
= Dark personalities: those characterised by socially offensive features/characteristics.
- Narcissism
= Extreme self-involvement because you are so focussed on yourself, you sometimes ignore
people around you, you fantasize of success (being famous), you request a lot of attention of your
surroundings, like to be in the spotlight, expect special favours and take advantage of others.
Associated with offline aggression among adolescents.
Narcissist function well in online environments (reason: controllability of self-presentation).
Narcissistic exploitativeness (= sub-construct of narcissism) is associated with cyber aggression
among adolescents.
,- Machiavellianism
= Uses manipulative strategies to reach a certain goal (mostly: power). They think about their
actions, they plan it and don’t do manipulative things. They also think about what they can
achieve with that.
Associated with offline aggression among adolescents.
- Psychopathy
= Being impulsive (in contrast with Machiavellianism), arrogant and insensitive towards the
feelings of others.
Associated with offline aggression among adolescents.
Associated with cyber aggression among adolescents.
There is some overlap between the traits. When studying these in social media, we don’t talk about
the extreme cases. But people who score a bit higher than average.
The Dark Triad study by Pabian, De Backer and Vandebosch (2015) is special because they are the
first to study the association between Dark Triads and cyber-aggression among adolescents
population. Results:
- 1/3 of the participants engaged at least once in the past 3 months in one/more cyber-aggression
activities.
- Only psychopathy was significantly related to cyber aggression (positively related).
- The intensity of Facebook use had a positive effect on online aggression.
Implications/limitations of the study:
- Since personality traits are quite stable in this age group, cyber aggression can be used as an
indicator of psychopathy in adolescents.
Can this be prevented? Social perspective-taking skills have been proven successful in
overcoming egocentrism an antisocial behaviour. Include training of these skills in prevention
programs.
- Short Dark Triad instrument did not allow to investigate sub-constructs of Machiavellianism,
Narcissism and psychopathy.
More recently: New version of Dark Triad = Dark Tetrad, sadism (= taking pleasure from
intentionally hurting or humiliating a human or animal) was added as fourth trait.
- Self-reports are not flawless: social desirable answers.
Theory of Planned Behaviour (Pabian & Vandebosch, 2014)
= A theory which argues that people’s intention to perform a certain behaviour is the best predictor of
their actual behaviour.
Proximal determinants
= Variables that influence behaviours directly (theory of planned behaviour study).
, Distal determinants
= Variables that influence behaviours indirectly (Dark Triad study).
Shortcomings in research of proximal determinants:
- Received few attention in previous research.
- Studied in isolation from other proximal determinants.
Importance of studying them: they can be changed by interventions.
Pabian and Vandebosch (2014) studied whether the theory of planned behaviour is a good framework
for explaining cyberbullying perpetration and which are the underlying beliefs of the attitude,
subjective norm and perceived behavioural control?
The behavioural intention is determined by three belief-based concepts:
- Attitude (A)
= A person’s global affective evaluation of a behaviour.
- Subjective norm (SN)
= The perception of what others think of the behaviour (e.g. social pressure).
- Perceived behavioural control (PBC)
= The perceived ease or difficulty of performing the behaviour (e.g. how likely does a person feel
that particular factors could make it easier/difficult to perform the behaviour).
The more favourable attitude and subjective norm are with respect to a behaviour, and the greater the
perceived behavioural control, the stronger should an individual’s intention be to perform the
behaviour under consideration.
Theoretical model of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB)
