Abstract
Cyberbullying is a harmful practice to which schools must respond. Australia does not have a cyberbullying-specific law, so schools navigate their responses within a range of laws not created for the online world, nor for youth. In this study, the murky legal environment of youth cyberbullying was problematised from perspectives found within two Australian secondary school communities. School leaders, key staff, teachers, students, and parents participated in interviews or focus groups held to gather their views about whether a new cyberbullying-specific law was needed to help reduce youth cyberbullying. A thematic analysis found three themes: that an educational approach was favoured over a legal one; that current laws mediated a constrained discussion about the benefit a new cyberbullying-specific law would have for schools and that there were school-identified unmet spaces where the law should be contributing better solutions to youth cyberbullying. Legal responses with implications for reducing youth cyberbullying are discussed.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by an Australian Research Council Grant No. LP 110200330. Donna Pennell is a recipient of an Australian Government Research Training Program Stipend.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Donna Pennell, Marilyn Campbell, and Donna Tangen, with legal contributions and review by Andrew Knott. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Donna Pennell and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Pennell, D., Campbell, M., Tangen, D. et al. Should Australia have a law against cyberbullying? Problematising the murky legal environment of cyberbullying from perspectives within schools. Aust. Educ. Res. 49, 827–844 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-021-00452-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-021-00452-w