ABSTRACT

This chapter adds to the growing body of research examining the impacts students and faculty members experience as a result of being cyberbullied at the post-secondary level, including impact on the wider university culture. It focuses on self-reported impacts of student-to-student, student-to-faculty, and faculty-to-faculty cyberbullying at four universities in Canada. Students who cyberbullied each other primarily used social networking sites, text messaging, email, and non-course-related sites, while they targeted faculty mainly through email, professor-rating sites, and course sites. One overarching finding from the open-ended responses and the interviews was the depth and extent of the negative affect students and faculty members said that they had experienced as a result of being cyberbullied. While one faculty member said in the aftermath of being cyberbullied, "you need a thick skin," others sought to re-direct their attention to appreciative students and supportive colleagues, while others said that they are using their anger to conduct research into bullying with an aim to change system.