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Cyberbullying is a term that was defined by Bill Besley, a Canadian educator (Macaulay et al., 2018). Besley (2005), states that cyberbullying mainly involves the use of technology to make deliberate attacks; it involves persistent bad behaviour to harm others. The bullies inflict pain on other individuals or a group of people by using technology.
The participant roles include the victim, the bully, the assistants, the reinforcers of the bully, the defenders of the victim, and the outsiders who watch from a distance (Hee et al., 2018). Intention, repetition and power imbalance are three criteria that describe bullying. Intention means that the bully deliberately hurts the victim; repetition refers to the frequency of the bullying instances, and power imbalance refers to the vulnerability of the victim of bullying – the bully is more powerful than the victim (Hee et al., 2018). Technological skills, anonymity and failure of the victim to escape the bully determine the online interaction power over the victim (Görzig & Ólafsson, 2012; Hee et al., 2018).
Cyberbullying policies are enforced through social media companies’ policies to address cyberbullying incidents on their platforms, through use of software, human or automated systems and geofencing (Milosevic, 2016). Violation of these policies leads to blocking of the user, removal of the content from the platform, and in some circumstances the case is reported to the relevant authorities (Milosevic, 2016).