Social Media: Risks & Opportunities
Notes
Lecture 1 - introduction
Expert opinion letter (group assignment - 20%)
Written closed-book exam (individual - 80%)
Lecture 2 – online aggression (troubled Thursday)
Online aggression = intentional harm delivered by the use of electronic means to a person or a group of
people irrespective of their age, who perceives such acts as offensive, derogatory, harmful or unwanted
(Cyber)bullying = an aggressive, intentional act or behavior that is carried out by a group or an individual
repeatedly and overtime against a victim who cannot easily defend themselves
� There needs to be an imbalance of power, which is different/more vague online
Cyberbullying = a form of online aggression, as it is more strict, because of the element of repetition
Three roles:
- Perpetrator
- Victim
- Bystander
Study by Pabian et al. (2015) – Dark Triad personality traits and adolescent cyber-aggression:
First study on relation between dark personality traits and cyber aggression among an adolescent
population
,Perpetrator 🡪 mostly have dark personalities 🡪 people characterized by socially offensive traits. They have
the intention to hurt. People that score high are seen as cold 🡪 These are:
- Narcissism
Extreme self-involvement, think a lot about yourself, that focus on yourself can result in
forgetting about others, they like to be in the spotlight and considered to be exploitative. So they
take advantage of others to reach their goals. They are comfortable with sharing things about
themselves online.
- Machiavellianism
Using manipulative strategies to reach a goal, mostly that is getting power. Think a lot about
their actions, they plan them. In online aggression, they are not impulsive but think clearly about
it in advance and how they achieve their goal.
- Psychopathy
Being impulsive, arrogant, insensitive to feelings of others. Three important elements are
impulsive behavioral style, arrogant and deceitful interpersonal style and deficient affective
experience (= insensitive to others feelings). It has been argued to add antisocial behavior to this,
but in child/adolescence context it is advised to exclude.
There is overlap between the traits, but each component is viewed as a different one.
In social media context, we are not talking about extreme cases of these traits.
What do we know about these traits in relation to (cyber-)aggression?
- Machiavellianism = associated with offline aggression
- Narcissism = associated with offline aggression, and they function well in online environment as
they are comfortable with sharing things about themselves
o Narcissistic exploitativeness, a subconstruct of narcissism is associated with
cyberaggression among adolescents
- Psychopathy
o Associated with offline aggression
o Associated with cyber aggression among adolescents
Results of that study 🡪 psychopathy was found a good predictor of online aggression, but no evidence was
found for that relation with machiavellianism and narcissism. Also positive relationship with social media
use and cyber aggression.
Gender: boys outscored girls in general for cyber-aggression, machiavellianism and psychopathy.
Age: this study showed a decrease in psychopathic traits with increasing age
,Take aways/implications of the study are:
- As personality traits are fairly stabilized in this age group (adolescence), cyber-aggression may be
used as an indicator of psychopathy in adolescents individuals
- Prevention?
o Social perspective-taking skills have been proven successful in overcoming egocentrism
and antisocial behavior
o Include training for these in prevention programs
A fourth characteristic is added 🡪 Dark Tetrad 🡪 Sadism = derive pleasure from causing others harm
Girls and boys are involved in online aggression, but they perform different forms of online aggression
� Girls perform more relational online aggression. E.g. gossiping, sending mean messages
� Boys are more involved in direct forms online aggression. E.g. directly insulting comments
Proximal = received to influence behavior closely
Distal = also influence behavior, but not directly
E.g. attitude towards online aggression or intention to perform bullying are proximal determinants.
Personally traits lie further away from the performance of aggressive behavior, which is therefore a
distal determinants.
Proximal determinants are important to focus as they are modifiable by interventions. Distal
determinants are harder to change
Study by Pabian & Vandebosch (2014) – Using theory of planned behavior to understand cyberbullying
Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) 🡪 focused on proximal determinants 🡪 which beliefs of attitude,
subjective norm and perceived behavioral control
Subjective norm 🡪 what others (relevant people around you) think that is okay behavior (e.g. what
parents, friends, teacher think about your behavior)
Perceived behavior control 🡪 how hard you think it is to perform certain behavior
Profiling perpetrators:
- Attitudes/values: more favorable attitude with regard to cyberbullying
- Subjective norms/normative beliefs: normative beliefs that peers approve cyberbullying
- Risk perception: having less concerns about begin caught and socially punished
TPB = theory of planned behavior 🡪 posits that people’s intention to perform a certain behavior is the best
predictor of their actual behavior. The behavioral intention, in turn, is determined by three belief-based
concepts.
, General rule 🡪 the more favorable the attitude and subjective norm are with respect to a behavior, and
the greater the perceived behavioral control, the stronger should be an individual’s intention to perform
the behavior under consideration
Example:
Behavior = cyberbullying
intention = intention to cyber bully others
Attitude towards the behavior = your evaluation of the behavior (favor/not in favor)
Subjective norm = estimation of others opinion on the behavior
Perceived behavioral control = how easy/difficult to perform behavior
� These three are influenced by the beliefs. If you believe that cyberbullying makes you popular,
then you might have a more positive attitude towards cyberbullying.
Perceived behavioral control can also directly influence behavior.
Actual behavioral control = there is a difference between the perceived and actual behavioral control.
The actual one also includes if you are able to perform certain behavior
Beliefs underlying the attitude towards cyberbullying 🡪 Positive vs. negative
- Positive outcomes (for bullies)
o Benefit of cyberbullying might be that it enhances or reconfirms the adolescent’s status
in the peer group
o It might provide a way to vent negative feelings
o Evoke positive feelings (such as feeling funny, more powerful and better than others)
- Negative outcomes (for bullies
o Disapproval by peers and punishments by parents, teachers and schools
o Possible feelings of guilt
o Knowing that the victim is hurt
Beliefs underlying the subjective norm towards cyberbullying 🡪
- Include expectations about whether people from several reference groups.
- SN is also based on what others actually do (descriptive norm beliefs)
Seeing others perform the behavior (descriptive norm), might lead to subjective beliefs about
their (positive) attitude towards cyberbullying (injunctive norm)
Beliefs underlying the perceived behavioral control 🡪
- The (perceived) anonymity offered by the internet and mobile phones, with the associated
(lower) risk of being caught might play a facilitating role
- Lack of direct, face-to-face contact may make people feel less restraint about saying and doing
hurtful things
- Having the necessary ICT skills and feeling confident in using ICT may render cyberbullying an
easy to perform behavior
Typical exam question (!!!) = explain the theory and apply to (form of risk behavior). Or draw or fill in
something in the model
