Child and Adolescent Online Risk Exposure - Chapter 12 - Racial and ethnic diversity in the social ecology of online harassment and cybervictimization: the adolescent-school context

Using the ecological perspective to bullying as a guiding framework, this chapter focuses on the constellation of factors that characterize school environments as the immediate and focal contexts (i.e., the microsystem) for understanding the landscape of cyberbullying victimization risk among students of color. More specifically, we examine the risk and protective factors occurring in the microsystem (i.e., parents, peers, school, and community), exosystem (parental stress), and macrosystem levels (gender role beliefs and stereotypes). We then discuss the implications for research and school-based practice. A review of research will in turn examine the critical dimensions of cyberbullying in relation to hate speech and online harassment, connecting it with (1) broader school factors, including the constellation of actors and roles that involve cyberbullying incidents and which frame the adolescent–school context; (2) characteristics of the microsystem participants—adolescents and schools; (3) factors that influence the quality of the adolescent–school relationship; (4) policy contexts that influence adolescent experiences beyond the adolescent–school microsystem. The latter includes research connecting cyberbullying to the broader system of structural inequality in school policy and practice as well as the developmental assets (e.g., individual characteristics and connection to external supports, including the family and community resources), frequently associated with positive youth development.