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Year 10: Term 2: Cyberbullying

STAKEHOLDERS

Government and Government bodies

Legal sources (Law societies, Legal Firms, Judge's Opinions)

Academic sources (Law schools, Universities etc)

Victim sources (Family or Victim support advocate groups)

Tech Sector

Businesses

Political Critics

TYPES OF CYBERBULLYING

10 Types of Cyberbullying (for parents)

1. Exclusion
Exclusion is the act of leaving someone out deliberately. Exclusion exists with in-person bullying situations, but is also used online to target and bully a victim. For example, your child might be excluded/uninvited to groups or parties while they see other friends being included, or left out of message threads or conversations that involve mutual friends.

2. Harassment
Harassment is a broad category under which many types of cyberbullying fall into, but it generally refers to a sustained and constant pattern of hurtful or threatening online messages sent with the intention of doing harm to someone.

3. Outing/Doxing
Outing, also known as doxing, refers to the act of openly revealing sensitive or personal information about someone without their consent for purposes of embarrassing or humiliating them. This can range from the spreading of personal photos or documents of public figures to sharing an individual’s saved personal messages in an online private group. The key is the lack of consent from the victim.
4. Trickery
Trickery is similar to outing, with an added element of deception. In these situations, the bully will befriend their target and lull them into a false sense of security. Once the bully has gained their target’s trust, they abuse that trust and share the victim’s secrets and private information to a third party or multiple third parties.
5. Cyberstalking
Cyberstalking is a particularly serious form of cyberbullying that can extend to threats of physical harm to the child being targeted. It can include monitoring, false accusations, threats, and is often accompanied by offline stalking. It is a criminal offense and can result in a restraining order, probation, and even jail time for the perpetrator.
6. Fraping
Fraping is when a bully uses your child’s social networking accounts to post inappropriate content with their name. It can be harmless when friends write funny posts on each other’s profiles, but has potential to be incredibly harmful. For example, a bully posting racial/homophobic slurs through someone else’s profile to ruin their reputation.
7. Masquerading
Masquerading happens when a bully creates a made up profile or identity online with the sole purpose of cyberbullying someone. This could involve creating a fake email account, fake social media profile, and selecting a new identity and photos to fool the victim. In these cases, the bully tends to be someone the victim knows quite well.
8. Dissing
Dissing refers to the act of a bully spreading cruel information about their target through public posts or private messages to either ruin their reputation or relationships with other people. In these situations, the bully tends to have a personal relationship with the victim, either as an acquaintance or as a friend.
9. Trolling
Trolling is when a bully will seek out to intentionally upset others by posting inflammatory comments online. Trolling may not always be a form of cyberbullying, but it can be used as a tool to cyberbully when done with malicious and harmful intent. These bullies tend to be more detached from their victims, and do not have a personal relationship.
10. Flaming
This type of online bullying constitutes of posting about or directly sending insults and profanity to their target. Flaming is similar to trolling, but will usually be a more direct attack on a victim to incite them into online fights.

USEFUL NEWSPAPERS AND DATABASES

NewsBank Access Australia (accessible on campus without logins and from home with logins)

NewsBank Access Australia is an Australian news database resource that provides archives of media publications as reference materials to libraries. It contains both on-campus and off-campus access to ALL regional, state and national Australian newspapers, including The Courier-Mail, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age + many more.

Australian Financial Review (only accessible on campus, without logins)

Digital edition of this newspaper is an interactive and searchable replica of the current and archived issues (6 months) of the print edition.


Available on campus only.


Available on campus only.

Informit Database

1. OLD LAWS RE CYBERBULLYING (COMMONWEALTH)

NOTE: This 1995 Act is still incredibly relevant, and the new law (see No. 2 below) complements it rather than replaces it.

THE LAW ABOUT CYBERBULLYING

Section 474.17 of the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth) is Use Carriage Service to Menace Harass or Cause Offence 

474.17 Using a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence

(1) A person is guilty of an offence if:
(a) the person uses a carriage service; and
(b) the person does so in a way (whether by the method of use or the content of a communication, or both) that reasonable persons (see box below for clarification of what this is) would regard as being, in all the circumstances, menacing, harassing or offensive.

Penalty: Imprisonment for 3 years.

(2) Without limiting subsection (1), that subsection applies to menacing, harassing or causing offence to:
(a) an employee of an NRS provider; or
(b) an emergency call person; or
(c) an employee of an emergency service organisation; or
(d) an APS employee in the Attorney-General’s Department acting as a National Security Hotline call taker.

2. NEW ONLINE SAFETY ACT 2021 FOR CYBERBULLYING (COMMONWEALTH)

4. AMENDMENT BILL TO 'CRIMES (DOMESTIC AND PERSONAL VIOLENCE) ACT 2021' (NSW)

In November 2020, NSW parliament passed an amendment bill that made changes to the Crimes (Domestic and Personal Violence) Act 2007 (NSW). These amendments made people sending messages that were considered a form of intimidation liable to prosecution. They are tougher laws, and impose up to 5 years' imprisonment for cyber-bullying and online trolling offenders. The Commonwealth penalty provides a minimum of 3 years. In increasing the penalty, the legislators were hoping to deter cyberbullying.