Lifelong Learning Programme

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.
This material reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein

Also available in:

"I Am Not Scared" Project

Homepage > Database > Publication List

Database

TITLE OF DOCUMENT:

Zickenkrieg im Internet. Geh dich aufhängen!

NAME OF AUTHOR(S):

Carola Padtberg

NAME OF PUBLISHER:

Spiegel Online

LANGUAGE OF DOCUMENT:

German

LANGUAGE OF THE REVIEW:

English

KEYWORDS:

Cyberbullying

DOCUMENT TYPOLOGY:

Web Article

TARGET GROUP OF PUBLICATION:

.

SIZE OF THE PUBLICATION:

1 - 20 pages

DESCRIPTION OF CONTENTS:

The article " Zickenkrieg im Internet. Geh dich aufhängen! " by Carol Padtberg, published on 11.08.2009 on the website “Spiegel Online" deals with the growing problem of the phenomenon of cyber-bullying. First, it is illustrated by the specific example of a student, how fast a small jibe can end in a real psychological terror by using the Internet as a medium. Then the article focuses on the impact of new media. Bullying itself has changed; what has been a mere argument in the schoolyard in former times is now all published in the Internet. So bullying now has a completely different quality and dimension. Due to the variety of social networks like SchülerVZ, StudiVZ, MySpace or Facebook, it is now possible to create profile pages, to gather lots of “friends” and to upload unlimited photos and comments, which of course provides an ideal breeding ground for phenomena such as bullying. In the youth-portal “Kwick “for example, a seventh class of a grammar school in Stuttgart opened a forum in which the girls could rate each other in "character" and "appearance" with school grades. The perfidy of these social networks is that people are protected by anonymity and because of that, they are even more uninhibited than they would be when facing a direct confrontation. As distinguished from the "traditional" bullying, cyber-bullying seems to have no end for the victims; it is not just limited to the area of school, but it also continues at home, so victims of cyber-bullying have no chance to retreat. The article also illustrates differences between girls and boys. While the girls’ use of social networks in terms of bullying is limited to “only” exchange insults, boys also use it for initial threats, which end up in real gatherings and fights in the majority of cases. The article also mentions that teachers are trying to monitor their students’ accounts and to prevent bullying, but that this usually leads to only moderate success, and also the alarm buttons operators of social network sites created in case of cyber-bullying are seldom really used.

REVIEWER’S COMMENTS ON THE DOCUMENT:

We chose the article „Zickenkrieg im Internet. Geh dich aufhängen!" by Carol Padtberg, published on 11.08.2009 on the website “Spiegel Online" because it describes in a really good way how bullying has changed in our digital time, basically because of the adoption of new communication technologies such as social networks. Furthermore, the article illustrates lots of current examples from school context that demonstrate the extent bullying has already adopted. Also the helplessness of teachers when facing situations in terms of bullying is brought up and it clarifies that especially in this area, teachers lack of important competences and that they need support in the form of advices about prevention and intervention measures.

NAME OF THE REVIEWING ORGANISATION:

Zepf

I Am Not Scared Project
Copyright 2024 - This project has been funded with support from the European Commission

Webmaster: Pinzani.it