The impact of case-based cyberbullying short films onto secondary school students' cyber bully/victim, awareness, empathy levels, and learning of coping strategies

The aim of this research is to develop case-based cyberbullying short films for secondary school students and determine the impact of these films on students' level of cyberbully/cybervictim, cyber bullying awareness, levels of empathy against cyber bullying, and learning coping strategies. Two disparate methods have been chosen since the research embodies two different objectives. First method is to develop cyberbullying short films based on cases and the second method is to test the effectiveness of those films comparing with face-to-face training. The first stage of the research was conducted on the basis of design and development model. In this part, the study group of the research involves 144 students and 11 experts. The data was collected through a questionnaire for identifying cyber bullying incidents, an interview form for need analysis, and a rubric for evaluating cyber bullying short films. Descriptive statistics for quantitative data and content analysis technique for qualitative data have been harnessed. The second stage of the study was carried out with the 2x2 pre-test and post-test control group experimental designs from the quantitative research designs. The first factor of the design was composed of two experimental groups. While case-based cyber bullying short films was given to the experimental group, face-to-face training about cyber bullying was given to the control group. The second factor of the design consisted of repetitive measurements including pre-test and post-test. These include cyber bully, cyber victim, cyberbullying awareness and empathy scales. The study group was composed of 7th grade 42 middle school students studying at the Sakarya Foundation College in the 2017-2018 academic years. Cyberbully/victim scale, cyberbullying awareness scale, empathy scale, and a rubric for cyberbullying coping strategies were used as data collection tools. In the analysis of the data, independent samples t-test and two-factor ANOVA for mixed measurements were performed. More, content analysis was employed for the qualitative data. At the culmination of the research, it was determined that cyberbullying incidents mostly occur via smartphones in different social media platforms especially on Facebook, online games, and WhatsApp environments. It was also determined that the cyberbullying mostly give rise to emotional problems; and in consequence of this, the students' psychology was adversely affected. Training by case-based cyberbullying short films was found more successful in terms of students' reducing cyberbully levels, increasing cyberbullying awareness and developing empathy skills when compared to the face-to-face training. Finally, it was concluded that students learnt about the terminology and scope of cyberbullying and many of them thought that using a single strategy is not sufficient for cyberbullying incidents. Students also considered using different coping strategies depending on whether the cyberbully is anonymous, the situation of cyberbullying incident, repetition frequency, continuity, seriousness, and effectiveness of the employed coping strategy.