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Bullying is a pervasive issue that has been identified as a serious, social problem in the U.S. and elsewhere (Beauchare, 2014; Faris & Felmlee, 2011; Faris & Felmlee, 2014; Kraft & Wang, 2010; Neves & Pinheiro, 2010; Squicciarini, Rajtmajer, Liu, & Griffin, 2015; Xu, Jun, Zhu, & Bellmore, 2012). Bullying represents a type of aggression that can take various forms, such as physical, verbal, and relational (Faris & Felmlee, 2011; Faris & Felmlee 2014; Faris & Felmlee, 2015; Olweus, 1993; Xu, Jun, Zhu, & Bellmore, 2012). The newest genre of peer aggression, cyberbullying, now takes place through the use of digital or online means (Cassidy, Jackson, & Brown, 2009; Felmlee & Faris, 2016; Vandebosch & Van Cleemput, 2009; Xu, Jun, Zhu, & Bellmore, 2012).
Cyberbullying is unique in the degree to which it provides anonymity and in its ability to facilitate the participation of multiple individuals in the harassment of victims. Perhaps for these reasons, victims often exhibit emotional distress (Ybarra, Mitchell, Wolak, & Finkelhor, 2006), low self-esteem (Patchin & Hinduja, 2010), loneliness (Sahin, 2012), and other negative emotions (e.g., Juvonen & Gross, 2008). Those targeted by forms of electronic aggression also reported more suicidal thoughts and were more likely to attempt suicide than those who had not been victimized (Hinduja & Patchin, 2010).
The purpose of this research is to examine cyber aggression on the social media website of Twitter. On this widely popular venue, Twitter enables users to send and read short, informative messages called “tweets” on a website with millions of active users each day. Yet Twitter can be used by some to disseminate aggressive, bullying messages, and the website has come under scrutiny for some of the most public instances. With only a few exceptions, bullying on Twitter has received little attention in the scholarly literature. In this project, therefore, the authors study instances of aggressive tweets that derogate individuals on the basis of one or more of three demographic characteristics: gender, race, and/or sexual orientation. The authors examine the network spread of cyber aggression within a twitter conversation and identify the social roles of the participants within the interchange. Given the potentially serious, ethical questions raised by cyberbullying (Neves & Peinhero, 2010), studying this type of damaging interchange on the relatively novel technological site of Twitter remains particularly important.