Cyberbullying in Germany: What has been done and what is going on.

Abstract

In Germany, research on the topic of ‘‘cyberbullying’’ is scarce; here, I review recent work on this topic. The first such study in Germany was by Katzer and Fetchenhauer in 2005 (Katzer, 2005). It was a standardized survey of 1,700 5th to 11th grade students (648 men and 803 women), which mainly focused on analyzing cyberbullying in Internet chatrooms. Because no scale was available for the assessment of cyberbullying in Internet chatrooms at the time, an instrument was developed based on the short version of the Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire (Olweus, 1989). Two other studies of cyberbullying were conducted by online questionnaires. Jager, Fischer, Riebel, and Fluck (2007) surveyed 1,997 students from 1st to 13th grade. Staude-Muller, Bliesener, and Nowak (in press) assessed cyberbullying with data from 1,277 children and adolescents aged 6–22 years. Because the studies used different methods and measurements a comparison of the results is difficult. Nevertheless all studies made it clear that cyberbullying is an important issue in Germany (Schultze-Krumbholz & Scheithauer, 2008). Katzer and Fetchenhauer found that frequencies for victimization in chatrooms (every few months to daily) range between 5.4% (being blackmailed or put under pressure) and 43.1% (being abused or insulted). Jager et al. found a frequency of about 20% for cybervictimization in general, with instant messaging the media most frequently used for cyberbullying. Staude-Muller et al. found denigration (22%), insults (20%), and threats (17%) to be the most common forms of cybervictimization in their sample. Of particular interest waswhether bullying is to be viewed as a cross-contextual phenomenon or if cyberbullying has to be seen as a distinct form of bullying. Katzer and Fetchenhauer showed both: on the one hand, there was a correlation between bullying behavior in school and in Internet chatrooms, and also between victimization in school and in Internet chatrooms;most pupils are bullies, or victims, in both environments. On the other hand, 21% of all cyberbullies were only cyberbullies, and 37% of cybervictims were only cybervictims.Of the cyberbullyingvictims, 47% reported that they just knew their bullies from school, while 34% knew the bullies only from the Internet (their chatroom identity), with 19% knowing them from school and the Internet. There was some overlap between victim and bully behavior. Victims of cyberbullying in chatrooms showed a tendency to be a bully exclusively in the environment of the victimization (chatrooms), whereas school victims also bullied others in chatrooms. This suggests that cyberbullying behavior may be the consequence of victimization experienced in school and could be interpreted as ‘‘fighting back’’ or ‘‘letting off steam.’’ Hierarchical regression analyses found as risk factors of bullying behavior in chatrooms: a bad parent relationship, high rates of absence in class, high delinquency, positive attitude toward aggression, and a high amount of antisocial online behavior. Risk factors for victimization in chatrooms were low popularity in chatrooms, low self-concept, anxious parental concern, faking the chat identity, and visits to adult or violent chatrooms (Katzer, Fetchenhauer, & Belschak, 2009a, 2009b).