To Help or Not to Help: Investigating the Intervening Behavior of Online Witnesses of Cyberbullying

The primary objective of this proposed project is to investigate the bystander phenomena during incidents of cyberbullying to better understand their behavior and the form it may take in Hong Kong. More specifically, some of the questions are: Why are some individuals more likely to respond in a positive or a negative way when witnessing bullying online? And how can research findings be applied to enhance positive bystander behavior in online contexts to ultimately reduce cyberbullying? This proposed project will examine four dimensions: the situational factors that shape cyberbullying contexts, cyber-bystanders’ belief system, cyberbystanders’ attributions of victims’ characteristics and their perceived relationship with victim; and how a short intervention may influence cyber-bystanders to intervene. The study is guided by the Five-Step Bystander Intervention model developed by Darley and Latané (1970) and the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB; Ajzen, 1991)..

Funding Source: RGC - General Research Fund (GRF)