This note considers bullying, in particular cyber-bullying
(harassment of people via the net, SMS or other digital
media). That harassment may have a lasting psychological
impact. It is often associated with physical assaults.
The note covers -
- academic studies, government report and primers regarding
victims, bystanders - making sense of bullying
- questions about culture and bullying in police forces,
the military and religious institutions
- digital bullying of students and teachers
- bullying in the electronic workplace
law - criminal law, common law, occupational health
& safety, discrimination law and other Australian
law regarding bullying
1 - selected Australian litigation regarding school
and workplace bullying
2 - further Australian bullying cases
3 - recent Australian cases and controversies
- an indication of damages awarded in Australian bullying
- Australian responses to bullying, including sacking
- litigation and anti-bullying developments in the UK,
Canada, New Zealand and other countries
- bullying in literature
- accounts by bullies and the bullied
in Australian bullying litigation.
supplements discussion elsewhere on this site regarding
security and the shape
of Australian law.
People have been nasty to each other as long as there
has been recorded history. Bullying is not a new phenomenon.
It is evident in accounts of schools in mediaeval Europe
and China, workplace initiations in Renaissance Florence
and 1920s Chicago, bastardisation in Pharaonic Egypt and
in Australia's Royal Military Academy during the 1960s
and 1990s, university common rooms in the 1850s and 1980s,
and courts over the past two millennia.
It may involve an individual or a group. It has variously
been characterised as bullying, mobbing, harassment and
even psychoterror. Injuries can be physical and/or psychological,
with those experiencing bullying on occasion being driven
to a breakdown, forced out of jobs or pushed to suicide.
It has been addressed through a range of law, including
workplace safety, criminal, anti-discrimination, employment
and common law, on occasion with substantial penalties
for perpetrators and organisations that have permitted
mistreatment of an individual.
Digital technology allows bullies new opportunities to
"mess with your head", through SMS texts, instant
messaging, defamatory web pages and comments in online
It has been argued that digital harassment is particularly
potent because -
is pervasive (an issue for what has been dubbed the
"always on generation") and
pseudonymity - or merely the relaxation of inhibitions
associated with much virtual contact - allows bullies
to express themselves with a vehemence that might be
tempered in face to face contact in the playground,
office or factory.
following pages explore cyberbullying in Australian schools
(and of students or teachers outside the playground or
classroom) and workplaces.
They highlight day by day responses, which for some victims
have involved abandonment of communication tools such
as mobile phones, and questions about legal frameworks.
They also highlight selected Australian litigation before
considering overseas experience.
There are few statutory definitions of bullying.
As the following pages indicate it has often been conceptualised
terms of particular outcomes (setting fire to an apprentice
for example being treated as a criminal act) or
terms of particular enactments and common law (for example
regarding stalking, discrimination,
hate-speech, occupational health & safety, defamation
and misuse of telecommunication networks).
in Australian law is discussed here.
Perceptions of what is bullying and what is socially (and
legally) acceptable 'rough play' or institutional discipline
have changed over time.
The Law Society of NSW thus offers one definition of workplace
and inappropriate workplace behaviour includes bullying,
which comprises behaviour which intimidates, offends,
degrades, insults or humiliates an employee possibly
in front of co-workers, clients or customers and which
includes physical or psychological behaviour.
Belsey characterised cyber-bullying as using -
and communication technologies such as e-mail, cell
phone and pager text messages, instant messaging, defamatory
personal Web sites, blogs, online games and defamatory
online personal polling Web sites, to support deliberate,
repeated, and hostile behaviour by an individual or
group, that is intended to harm others.
Key elements of bullying are behaviour that is unreasonable
and that both -
intimidates, offends or humiliates
places someone's physical or psychological welfare at
behaviour usually involves repeated and persistent action.
It may be passive or active, by an individual or a group,
in private or in a public space such as a meeting-room,
schoolyard or online forum. It may involve threats and
coercive behaviour such as seizure of the target's property,
sarcasm or unreasonable teasing. It may involve physical
isolation or ignoring the target.
Bullying may be direct or indirect, physical or psychological.
It is shrugged off by some targets. Other people experience
lasting hurt. It is an area of disagreement, with some
observers claiming that it is pervasive and serious, other
observers warning against a contemporary moral panic or
efforts to wrap children in cotton wool.
next page (studies)