Digital communication is secret for two main reasons; first: digital devices (smartphone, tablet, laptop.) make it invisible to people who are not directly involved; second: it leaves no physical marks but it can cause deep emotional and psychological wounds. It acts, as a new social environment without any precedent, so the whole phenomenon needs to be profoundly questioned in order to be better understood. 

This is a major issue for adults responsible for young people’s wellbeing. It is a very hot topic and a sensitive issue in schools and all other educational structures. However, there are two major difficulties:

On the one hand, adults have no idea what young people are doing when they spend time on their smartphones ignoring their surroundings. So how can adults help, detect the risks and provide support if needed? 

On the other hand, digital communication is actually just real communication on digital devices so it obeys the same social and gender rules as real life. One single phenomenon of socialisation is occurring but it is happening through two continuous and simultaneous channels. The gender system does not care about how we interact, it is omnipresent. 

Communities of adults involved in schools are aware of the difficulties inherent to this new context as they try to protect the young people they are educating. Cyberbullying has become an inescapable and major issue in education, even if some adults are reluctant to accept it. Cyberbullying is closely tied to gender issues, such as sexism, LGBT-phobia and heteronormativity (Ringrose & al., 2013).

Schutze-Krumbholz & al. (2015) wrote a literature review on how research is evolving on those issues and making the connection between digital devices and their impact on the school context. Two years ago, we carried out a sociological study on this topic in twelve schools in the Paris area. We confirmed that there is a link between bullying within schools and cyberbullying. There is one single relationship network that acts in real life and online. “Human” friends and cyberfriends are more or less the same people, usually peers and often children of the same age or classmates. That is why the gender social control they exert is so strong, and may be stifling if not unbearable. Social control is powerful. Instant messaging (Dehue & al., 2008; Smith & al., 2008) reinforced social gender norms’ control (Ringrose & Renold, 2014). One of the more surprising outcomes was that young people do not seek adult support when they are victims of cyberbullying. This holds true for adults within schools, as well as parents and adults within each family. Avoiding appealing to adults for help has less to do with trust, and more to do with the motives of bullying: physical appearance and clothing, doing gender and heterosexuality. Teens are not comfortable talking about these taboo subjects with adults. So, our research showed that one of the keys to finding out more about these issues is authorising young teenagers to talk about them within a specific framework without feeling guilty or obscene and dirty. To build on this project, we decided to continue our research with a second study. 

This presentation will report on the research currently taking place in ten middle schools (12 to 14 years old) situated in the educational administrative area the “académie de Créteil” in France. Schools volunteered to take part in the research project organised for the school year 2018-2019. A one-day event was organised to launch the project, the objectives were presented as were the roles of the adults (researchers and teams from the schools) and pupils, and the program schedule. 

The French school climate has been documented since the early 2000s. It is a useful way to identify the characteristics of social conditions in school while considering the opinion of students on the quality of their relationships with adults and peers within the school context. Gottfredson, (2001) summarised existing literature and pointed out that the issue of school violence consists of minor victimisation incidents and indignities; that is why school bullying must be considered as a peer issue. Since 2000, scientific research on this theme has rocketed all over the world, for example, in Europe (Smith, 2002) and in France (Debarbieux & Blaya, 2001). In French context, since 1993, Debarbieux has done a lot to introduce school climate and victimisation questionnaires within schools, working with school boards. Our research belongs to this field. Our work differentiates itself because our questionnaire combines information from questions on school bullying with those on gender issues. It also explores two contexts or spaces (within school and online). This is a totally new approach aimed at deepening our understanding of the phenomenon. The project “Se former pour agir contre les cyberviolences à caractère sexiste et sexuel” (‘Educate yourself to take action against sexist and sexual cyberviolence’) is divided into three main phases. First, the project was set up with the teams of each school board (September to November 2018). Second, data was collected through a victimisation questionnaire completed online by students within school time. Students included were 12 to 14 years old from three grades of middle school (N=3409, December 2018). Third, a restitution workshop covering the main results in each school is being held, to help with decision-making on a few specific actions to be implemented in school programmes (January to May 2019). Since we discovered in our prior research that students are deeply reluctant to appeal to adults, we have devised an experimental system for bringing adults and students together that gives a pilot group of volunteer students a central role. Thus, the aim of the project is to design general procedures to consider gendered bullying within school and online for students.

As the project schedule ends in June 2019, we will be able to present the main results of the questionnaire, however, our presentation will focus on two main areas: 1) The questionnaire: we are expecting to confirm the rates of victimisation found in our prior study with minor gaps driven by local specificities or minor changes made into the questionnaire. 2) Procedures within schools: we expect to see a general pattern of ways of tackling the phenomenon with a central role played by students. The pattern will also be adapted to local conditions, contexts and possibilities.

Debarbieux, E., Blaya, C. (eds.) (2001). Violence in Schools: Ten Approaches in Europe. Paris : ESF. Couchot-Schiex, S., Moignard, B. & Richard, G. (2016). Cybersexisme, une étude sociologique dans des établissements franciliens. Paris : Centre Hubertine Auclert. [online https://www.centre-hubertine-auclert.fr/sites/default/files/fichiers/etude-cybersexisme-web.pdf] Dehue, F., Bolman, C. & Völlink, T. (2008). Cyberbullying : Youngsters’experiences and parental perception. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 11(2), 367-380. Gottfredson, D.C. (2001). Schools and Delinquency. Cambridge: University Press. Ringrose, J., Harvey, R. G., & Livingstone, S. (2013). Teen girls, sexual double standards and ‘sexting’: Gendered value in digital image exchange. Feminist Theory, 14(3), 305-323. Ringrose, J. & Renold, E. (2014). Dépasser le « slut shaming » : étude du cyberharcèlement sexuel dans une perspective féministe. Colloque Les cyberviolences sexistes et sexuelles : mieux les connaître, mieux les prévenir, 25 novembre 2014, Centre Hubertine Auclert, Paris, France. Schultze-Krumbholz, A.,Göbel, K., Scheithauer, H., Brighi, A. & Guarini, A. (2015). A Comparison of Classification Approaches for Cyberbullying and Traditional Bullying Using Data from Six European Countries. Journal of School Violence, 14, 47-65. Smith, P.K. (ed.). (2002). Violence in Schools: The Response in Europe. London: Routledge. Smith, P.K., Mahdavi, J., Carvalho, M., Fisher, S., Russell, S. & Tippett, N. (2008). Cyberbullying: Its nature and impact in secondary school pupils. The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 49(4), 376-385.