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Abstract-Kofoed-2009-1

 

 

Governing emotional evaluations in activities recognized as cyber bullying

af Jette Kofoed

A transdisciplinary conference organised by COST Action 298 "Participation in the Broadband Society", Copenhagen, Denmark, 13.-15. maj 2009

Abstract

The uses of new technologies proliferate, and cell phones and chat rooms have become important and influential factors in everyday lives of children and youngsters. These media have also become part of bullying patterns in new and unforeseen ways (Shariff 2007; Smith et al 2008).

Based on qualitative ethnographic fieldwork and on virtual fieldwork conducted among 7th and 8th graders in the area of Copenhagen, it becomes apparent that in cases of cyber bullying among female teens chat rooms seem to be an influential non-human actor.

This paper investigates cyber bullying among teenagers, and pays particular attention to the importance of a particular feature at the most popular Danish chat room among teenagers www.arto.dk (with app 800.000 profiles).

This feature is called 'my daily mood' and is updated on a regular basis on personal web profiles. It lays out conditions for children to express emotions, and to evaluate their state of mind.

Among fellow female pupils it is a daily practice to (self)evaluate your mood and to check the evaluation of the moods of specific others.

The hypothesis presented in this paper is that the practice of evaluation of emotions in cyberspace becomes an important component in practices of bullying where evaluations of well known others are circulated and exposed to innumerable others.

The evaluations are unnamed and are coded in ways that make them recognizable only for the ones participating in the same social setting. The evaluations may consist of death threats, name-calling, negative evaluations of bodies, actions, dressing etc and contain utterances such as 'I'll never you see again, you slut'.
Theoretically the paper draws on Gilles Deleuzes concepts of forces, desire and the virtual (Deleuze 2004, 2006), and on concepts of management and governmentality from Foucault (Foucault 1988) and Rose (Rose 1990).

The research questions addressed in this paper are the following:
If the feature 'my daily mood' is perceived as a technology of management, in what ways does such a technology become an actor in actions of cyber bullying? What desires (for exclusion, belonging and management) does this particular technology offer as relevant?

Furthermore the paper will reflect upon how these evaluations become (lack of) evidence once they are detached from the chat room. They are printed out or deleted and thus become evidence (or destruction of evidence) in, what by authorities (teachers, parents, principals) are defined as cases of bullying.

References:

Deleuze, G. (2006) Two Regimes of Madness. New York: Semiotext(e), 2006.

Deleuze, G. (2004) Foucault. Copenhagen: Det lille forlag.

Foucault, M. (1988). Technologies of the Self. L.H. Martin, H. Gutman, P.H. Hutton (eds) Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

Rose, N. (1990). Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self. London: Routledge

Shariff, S. (2008) Cyberbullying. Issues and Solutions for the School, the Classroom and the Home. Montreal: Routledge.

Smith, P.K. et al (2007) Cyberbullying: its nature and impact in secondary school pupils In: Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 49:4 (2008), pp 376–385