Call for proposalsBullying – or harassment – can be defined as a repetitive and intentional hurting of one person by another or by a group, in a situation of power imbalance (the bully has physical and/or psychological control over his/her target or mistreats him/her with a group of followers that he/she has gathered around him/her) (Olweus, 1999). Bullying can have multiple consequences, with both short and long-term effects: anxiety, loss of self-confidence, sleep disorder, depressive disorder, social phobia, etc. Bullying is a phenomenon that occurs in many social contexts: high school (Smith, Sharp, 2000; Catheline, 2015; Roberge, Beaudouin, 2016); university (Hamel, 2008), workplace (Hirigoyen, 2017); family – bullying among siblings – (Tippet, Wolke, 2014); domestic sphere (Hirigoyen, 2003). Street harassment can also be included (Gayet-Viaud, 2021). Bullying can take many forms: verbal (insult, mockery), psychological or moral abuse (denigration, humiliation, threats, rumors), physical (pushing, hitting) or sexual violence (touching, forced kissing, sexual advances). With the emergence of the Web 2.0 and smartphones in the mid-2000, new forms of bullying and violence have appeared: sending insulting or threatening text messages, sending explicit or sexually suggestive emails, happy slapping, identity theft, revenge porn… Several studies – some of which were conducted with an intersectional approach (Stoll, Block, 2015; Angoff, Barhart, 2021) – converge on the fact that this type of violence is oftentimes gender-based, and strongly rooted in gender stereotypes and sexism. For example, among teenagers, girls are twice as likely to be victims of cyberbullying as boys, and young LGBTQIA+ people are four times as likely (Couchot-Schiex et al., 2017; Felmee, Faris, 2016; Hinduja, Patchin, 2020). In addition, racism, fatphobia and the stigmatization of students with disabilities also play a significant role in both school bullying and cyberbullying (Sentenac et al., 2016; Debarbieux et al., 2018). There is no consensus on the definition of cyberbullying. Some scholars define it as attacks perpetrated through digital tools, while others define it similarly to bullying (Vandebosch, Van Cleemput, 2008; Smith et al., 2008). However, while the imbalance of power is almost always present in a digital context (bullies can act anonymously or pseudonymously; content can spread virally involving many others as witnesses), the repetitive nature and the intention to harm are more difficult to grasp. Repetition can come from the fragmentation of actions (each like or comment participates in the dissemination of content) or from the permanence of digital traces (compromising content can resurface months later), but the intention to harm is not always indisputable, as one can “like” or “retweet” out of habit, inadvertently, under the influence of emotion or in order to publish content to entertain others and gain popularity (boyd, 2015) without anticipating the online violence that can result (Stassin, 2021). Furthermore, the emotional intensity attached to content can facilitate its online dissemination, while digital mediation can also lead to the distancing of emotions (Quemener, 2018; Alloing, Pierre, 2020). Many studies have been dedicated to examining the link between school bullying and cyberbullying between students (Li, 2007; Dooley et al. 2009; Pyżalski, 2012), providing characterization of cyberbullying dynamics (Willard, 2007; Blaya, 2013) or focusing on the actors and devices involved in their prevention (Blaya, 2015; Dilmaç, Kocadal, 2019). Other studies have pointed out that this peer violence continues at the university (Faucher et al., 2014), but also at the workplace (Dupré, 2018) where different forms of digital incivilities are observed which, when repeated, have deleterious effects (Carayol, Laborde, 2021). Finally, others have focused on the private and domestic sphere, where digital technology has become a tool for control, domination and humiliation, within a couple or after a divorce or separation (Fernet et al.; 2019). For example, one can cite the use of revenge porn by men as retribution against their partner or ex-partner after a sentimental rupture or an infidelity: in a “name or shame†strategy to affect their reputation, they humiliate by publishing private and identifying content online without their consent (Hall, Hearn, 2019). Humiliating or compromising messages can be sent to a single person by dozens or hundreds of people. This phenomenon, called “flaming”, is now recognized by the French Law of 3 August 2018 as “pack cyberbullying” and stipulates that anyone participating in this kind of action, even by a single like or comment, can now be convicted. These “digital raids”, which generally target women (famous or not), LGBTQIA+ people or other minorities, or human rights advocates (Corroy, Jehel, 2019), feminist or anti-racist activists (Bibié, Goudet, 2018), can be compared to online hate speech (Monnier, Seoane, 2019). Indeed, the latter is based on the alleged feeling of hatred towards a minority group – sexual or gender minority, ethnic minority, people with disabilities – (Pyżalski, 2022) and/or based on the instigation of hatred by inciting violence or reinforcing stigmas.
For this conference, unpublished, innovative papers focusing on – but not limited to – the following topics are welcome: 1. Theoretical approaches to online violence and cyberbullying
2. The role of emotions and feelings
3. Intersectional approaches
4. Prevention of cyberbullying and online violence
|
