About this Research Topic

Background

Cyberbullying and cyberaggression are often rooted in the power imbalances between bullies and their victims. During the COVID-19 pandemic, an increased reliance on social media consumption and communication technology, including text messaging via mobile devices and computer-based electronic communication and videoconferencing, has become manifest in education and workplace contexts (Wiederhold, 2020). With this increased dependence on computer-mediated interactions, the likelihood of experiencing cybervictimization involving aggressive bias and virtual microaggressions, especially in cross-cultural contexts, has increased.

Prior cyberbullying literature has highlighted cybervictims who have experienced various forms of cyberaggression, including children in schools, college students in universities, and employees in the workplace. These experiences have led to a variety of negative effects among children and adults in the areas of psychological well-being (self-esteem, self-confidence), emotional disturbance (anger, depression, anxiety, stress), social relations (dysfunctional peer relationships), education (lower academic performance, poor quality of life), and work (increased turnover and intentions to quit) (Gao et al., 2020). Prior work has done well in describing the prevalence, antecedents, and effects of cyberaggression and cybervictimization.

This Research Topic aims to examine the contextual, cultural and psychosocial factors that explain bias-based cyberaggression and cyberbullying from a cross-cultural perspective. Prior literature has examined the prevalence and consequences of cyberbullying and cybervictimization across countries. However, to date, much of the literature has neglected cross-cultural research among bullies, victims, and bystanders. The cross-cultural perspective of this Research Topic incorporates theories, methods, measures, and factors that address cyberaggression biases occurring in cyberbullying and cybervictimization experiences in education and workplace contexts across different countries. Additionally, the Research Topic will examine contextual factors affecting interactions in cross-cultural contexts and relationships.

We invite contributions from the disciplines of communication, psychology, psychiatry, social pediatrics, criminology, education, business, the humanities, and other social sciences. We welcome original research as well as theoretical, case study, methods, and systematic review papers across different disciplines and cultures. Themes may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• the psychosocial factors involved in, and the psychological consequences of, bias-based cyberaggression
• preventing and intervening in bias-based cyberaggression
• the contextual factors influencing cyberbullying and bias-based cyberaggression
• the socio-ecological, theoretical framework of interactions between children, adolescents, and adults that lead to bias-based cyberaggression
• the unique role of cybervictim, cyberaggressor, and cyber-bystander from a cross-cultural perspective
• the combination of the roles of cybervictim-aggressor, cyberaggressor-bystander, etc. from a cross-cultural perspective
• international interventions, projects, and experiences developed by different countries to reduce bias-based cyberaggression in multiple contexts including schools, universities, and workplaces
• the wide range of risk and protective factors involved in the prevention and reduction of cyberbullying
• longitudinal analyses of the mitigating effect of different variables on the relationships between cyberbullying, culture, and health indicators
• cross-cultural and cross-ethnic comparisons of cyberbullying and associated variables in cyber-victimization and cyberaggression
• the role of cross-cultural interactions in understanding bias-based cyberaggression
• the effect of cyberbullying and cyber-aggression on interactions within a variety of cross-cultural relationships.

Keywords: cyberaggression, cyberbullying, cybervictimization, cross-cultural communication, cross-cultural psychology

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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