Racial differences in cyberbullying from the perspective of victims and perpetrators.

Although cyberbullying has attracted a good deal of research attention in recent years, we know much less about how cyberbullying differs by race and ethnicity, and the few studies that have examined this topic have yielded conflicting findings. In the current study, 352 White and Black respondents answered questions about their victimization and perpetration experiences with both traditional bullying and cyberbullying. More than 80% of both White and Black participants indicated that they had been victims of traditional bullying, and over 45% had been victims of cyberbullying at least once. Fewer reported perpetrating either type of bullying. Texting and social media were the most common forms of technology used by both White and Black respondents as well as the most common venues by which cyberbullying occurred. For all participants, cyberbullying victimization was associated with greater suicidal ideation, and traditional bullying victimization was related to higher loneliness, depression, and suicidal ideation. At higher frequencies of traditional bullying victimization, Black respondents reported higher loneliness than did White participants. Understanding patterns of technology use and experiences with cyberbullying victimization and perpetration will help to inform effective strategies for prevention and intervention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Accommodating Grief on Twitter: An Analysis of Expressions of Grief Among Gang Involved Youth on Twitter Using Qualitative Analysis and Natural Language Processing.

There is a dearth of research investigating youths' experience of grief and mourning after the death of close friends or family. Even less research has explored the question of how youth use social media sites to engage in the grieving process. This study employs qualitative analysis and natural language processing to examine tweets that follow 2 deaths. First, we conducted a close textual read on a sample of tweets by Gakirah Barnes, a gang-involved teenaged girl in Chicago, and members of her Twitter network, over a 19-day period in 2014 during which 2 significant deaths occurred: that of Raason "Lil B" Shaw and Gakirah's own death. We leverage the grief literature to understand the way Gakirah and her peers express thoughts, feelings, and behaviors at the time of these deaths. We also present and explain the rich and complex style of online communication among gang-involved youth, one that has been overlooked in prior research. Next, we overview the natural language processing output for expressions of loss and grief in our data set based on qualitative findings and present an error analysis on its output for grief. We conclude with a call for interdisciplinary research that analyzes online and offline behaviors to help understand physical and emotional violence and other problematic behaviors prevalent among marginalized communities.