Violence and Abuse – Pilant's Business Ethics Blog

The Ethics Sage Addresses Cyberbullying

The Ethics Sage has a new blog post on the issue of Cyberbullying. I would appreciate it if you would go to his blog and read the entire entry. The two paragraphs below do not do full justice to the depth of his thought.

James Pilant

Are our Schools a Safe Place for Students to Grow and Learn?

Cyberbullying and Random Acts of Violence Threaten American Exceptionalism

http://www.ethicssage.com/2013/10/are-our-schools-a-safe-place-for-students-to-grow-and-learn.html

Cyberbullying in our schools threatens the safety of our students both in and out of school. It creates an environment where learning is negatively affected and potentially devastates the bullied individual. The result may be embarrassment, withdrawal from social and educational activities, attempted suicide and worse. I am tired of hearing schools defend their inaction when cyberbullying attacks occur after school hours and on weekends by claiming they are not responsible because the attacks did not occur on school grounds or during school time. If one student shot another outside of school would they look the other way? I don’t think so (or at least I hope not).

The extent of the phenomenon is hard to quantify. But one 2010 study by the Cyberbullying Research Center, an organization founded by two criminologists who defined bullying as “willful and repeated harm” inflicted through phones and computers, said one in five middle-school students had been affected. The purpose of this blog is to address what can be done about it. I have blogged before on the behavioral impact of being bullied through the use of social media. Attacks using Facebook, and Instagram, an online photo- and video-sharing service, and other social media threaten to stifle emotional development and growth, two factors so important to becoming a productive member of society.

From around the web.

From the web site, Stop Cyberbullying.

http://stopcyberbullyingsite.wordpress.com/2013/05/29/cyberbullying-research-paper/

People should never feel like they are useless or lonely or like they don’t matter. However, when people cyberbully other people, that is exactly how the victims feel. No one should feel that way. Cyberbullying is bullying that happens in cyberspace, hence the name. People can get bullied over text, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Cyberbullying is becoming a bigger situation as time passes and the internet comes into play more and more, and people need to notice and do something about it.

There are many statistics on cyberbullying. 43 percent have been cyberbullied, 70 percent have reported that they have seen it happen, 68 percent of teens agree that is a problem (Eleven). When pictures or posts get put on the internet is impossible to delete it, even if you do delete it it will still be up there (Cyber-bullying). The most common way to be cyberbullied is instant messaging. Most cyberbullies are girls, it is twice as likely for them to be girls. One third of people have been threatened online (Cyberbullying). Most people who have been cyberbullied will not tell anyone about, only one tenth of victims will tell someone. Victims who have been bullied can be two to nine times more likely to commit suicide (Eleven). Many people ask why they do it, but also people ask how it happens.

Is ‘traditional’ bullying different from cyberbullying? (cjald93.wordpress.com)

Bullying by Mob

Janice Harper: What the Stanford Prison Experiment Can Teach Us About the Workplace

A focus on interpersonal conflicts between the bad bully and the good worker focuses on seemingly inherent qualities of individuals, and fails to explain the sheer brutality that ensues when bullying expands to include multiple people engaged in shunning, gossiping about, sabotaging, and making accusations and reports against a targeted worker. The collective bullying of a worker is called “mobbing,” and it typically ensues when a worker does or says something to annoy management, and management declares or demonstrates that the worker is unwanted. When that happens, it takes little effort to persuade the broader workforce to turn against the worker.

Just as Zimbardo talks about the slippery slope of evil that begins with the subject mindlessly taking the first step toward aggression through a seemingly minor action, when mobbing begins, workers are not initially encouraged to be cruel to the targeted worker. Far from it; they are told the worker must go, that it is the worker’s own doing, and the worker will be better off if they just move on. The first step onto the slippery slope of mobbing behavior thus often begins with something as simple as agreeing with management that the targeted worker must go — even if the decision to terminate the worker is clearly arbitrary or punitive or in some cases illegal, such as retaliation for reporting sexual harassment, discrimination or unlawful behavior.

Janice Harper: What the Stanford Prison Experiment Can Teach Us About the Workplace

I have seen a lot of articles on workplace bullying but they tend to focus on single perpetrators. This talks about mobbing, a phenomenon where multiple people bully a worker. This is not uncommon. Please go to the web site and read the full article. It’s worth your while.

James Pilant

From around the web –

From the web site, Mobbing and Bullying:

A recent study showed that about 35 percent of students who are bullied experience post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. This study echoes the findings of workplace mobbing research done by Dr. Heinz Leymann in the early 1980’s and has been validated many times by targeted individuals with whom I have worked. If we understand that bullying and mobbing attack the spiritual, psychological and emotional health of the individual as well as the physical, we also must consider that the damage done in an organization by this behavior goes beyond those directly involved.

From the web site, EndMobbing:

Mobbing is the targeting of persons in workplaces and schools by another individual or group of individuals in order to degrade, humiliate, and ultimately remove them from the workplace or school organization. This removal can be through firing, expulsions, or because the target can no longer tolerate the conditions and leaves of his or her own accord. The consequences for victims of mobbing are usually devastating. For its victims, mobbing affects physical heath, psychological and emotional health, relationships with family members, and, for workers, financial health. Mobbing also tends to erode a victim’s belief in a fair and just world. Mobbing is different from bullying because the workplace or school organizations are also involved, either through failure to act to protect their members when they have a responsibility to act, or through “blaming the victim” and joining the attack in progress on the victim, usually acting through official, bureaucratic channels. Secrecy and lack of transparency among organizational leaders and the presence of a hostile workplace culture are common indicators of mobbing-prone organizations.

And from the web site, The Hidden Evil’s Weblog:

Mobbing sometimes continues after individuals have left the organization. Although this can rarely be proven, slandering continues… This ongoing mobbing, even after the individuals are no longer connected with the organization, seems to justify the Mobbers previous behavior & upholds the organization s decision. They try to defend themselves by continuing to destroy the victim s reputation… Dianna: the next minute I thought, Howe can all these people just go along with this? Yet I would think, I can t blame these people. I know they have to go along with this for their own survival