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Published in the Slovak Republic Media Education (Mediaobrazovanie) Has been issued since 2005 ISSN 1994-4160 E-ISSN 1994-4195 2020, 60(3): 443-453
DOI: 10.13187/me.2020.3.443 www.ejournal53.com
Intentional Concepts of Verbal Bullying and Hate Speech as a Means of Expressing Intolerant Attitude to the Speech Object
Elena A. Makarova a , b , *, Elena L. Makarova c, Sergei V. Maximets d
a Don State Technical University, Russian Federation b Taganrog Management and Economics Institute, Russian Federation c Southern Federal University, Russian Federation d Don State Technical University, Russian Federation
Abstract
Everyday technological innovations emerge bringing new possibilities for people to express themselves in digital world; they also change the conventions of information exchange, communication modes. The d igitalization of different spheres in the world creates huge new opportunities for sharing and cooperation. We can even talk about the advent of a new generation of "digital natives" as if it were inevitable. In order to be successful new technologies should rest on two pillars. First, they must be comprehensive, fill in the gaps, without expanding them. Secondly, they should be based on respect for human rights and dignity. In this context, promoting digital literacy for all has never been so important before.
The paper discusses the formation of modern media content specifics intended for social networks, and determines the impact of communication traditions on this content. The new standards of interpersonal communication development were caused by social networks emergence; a result significantly redefined communication itself, fundamentals and traditions. The principle of not only the information production, but also its consumption has changed. We can talk about the emergence of communication explicit form, the essence of which is the lack of standards, lack of tolerance and negative content. In the process of communication a respect to an interlocutor is important. In the situation which lacks respect and tolerance the imbalance of power prevails some negative forms of communication emerge, such as verbal bullying and hate speech. Verbal violence is an insidious thing as it is hard to detect, even harder to resist. Verbal bullying and hate speech as forms of verbal violence in cyber space have been considered in the paper. These phenomena cannot but affect various areas associated with the creation and dissemination of information. It was the media, as the main elements of this sphere that were forced to recognize the situation when their field of activity underwent very significant transformations.
Keywords: media studies, social networks, media content, communication, verbal bullying, hate speech.
1. Introduction
Everyday technological innovations emerge bringing new possibilities for people to express themselves in digital world; they also change the conventions of information exchange, communication modes (Vilmanté, 2017).
* Corresponding author
E-mail addresses: makarova.h@gmail.com (E.A. Makarova)
The digitalization of different spheres in the world creates huge new opportunities for sharing and cooperation. We can even talk about the advent of a new generation of "digital natives" as if it were inevitable. In order to be successful new technologies should rest on two pillars. First, they must be comprehensive, fill in the gaps, without expanding them. Secondly, they should be based on respect for human rights and dignity. In this context, promoting digital literacy for all has never been so important before.
In addition to helping people succeed in labor markets, education, medical services and others digital skills also allow people to widen their hobbies and personal interests. Music, art, sports and literature, movies and musicals are just in a few clicks to reach.
Instead of "digital natives," we need to support the growth of a new generation of "digital citizens" with the necessary communication skills for life, work and participation in community events today and tomorrow. This can only happen through a coherent policy, building on strong commitments and sustainable development of digital education. Digital literacy of people should form the basis for the knowledge societies we need in the twenty first century.
From the second half of the twentieth century the sources of influence on the speech culture of Russian society have changed. In the XXI century, this influence is carried out by various types of media, including the Internet. This imposes a special responsibility on the media: they are called upon to fulfill the important educational function of protecting the literary language, its norms, which "is a matter of national importance, since the literary language is exactly what unites the nation in terms of language" (Sirotinina, 2015).
Media discourse has become a leading type of institutional communication these days. The emergence and rapid development of social networks has led to a structural change in the public sphere in society: private communication merges with public. Nevertheless, the opposition of friends and foes (the basic cultural opposition) can be traced in traditional and new genres of media discourse. It is of interest to consider this opposition in the aspect of the targeted specialization of discourse. Researchers all over the world study media influence on children and adolescents' verbal aggression development, Stockdale, L., Son, D., Coyne, S., Stinnett, S, Walker, L., Memmott-Elison M. are among them (Coyne, 2018; Stockdale et al., 2019; Walker et al., 2019). Media psychologists pay particular attention to several key concepts when describing this type of communication. In a conversation about cyber-bullying (Wn^k-Gozdek et al., 2019), it is first necessary to mention the following three features of computer-mediated communication:
- the principle of the triple "A" (anonymous, accessible, affordable) - anonymity, accessibility, low cost;
- less emotional computer-mediated communication, characterized by the absence of daily social signals;
- computer-mediated communication contributes to the attribution of personality to a hostile social group (Glazman, 2009).
Addressing specialization is understood as the allocation of a typical recipient in communication, involving many communicants. Communication is dialogical, according to M.M. Bakhtin (Bakhtin, 1986), but can be presented as oriented to a specific recipient (a classic version of a personality-oriented everyday discourse), to several recipients in a live dialogue, and can also be directed to an indefinite number of relevant and potential readers or listeners. In the latter case, such a discourse is carried out without targeted specialization or with the allocation of certain groups of recipients. Unspecialized treatment is expressed in the formula "Listen to everything!" Specialized treatment, studied in advertising communication as targeting, involves the allocation of different types of recipients according to age, gender, territorial, educational, professional and other criteria. The ideological understanding of targeted specialization allows you to establish the space of your friends and others and, accordingly, consolidate them according to certain criteria. Literature devoted to the antinomy of oneself and strangers is boundless, but schematically strangers are usually presented in three main guises - as others (in mythological and everyday aspects), as enemies (in ideological and political aspects), and others (in religious and philosophical aspects)
Speaking about the modern media space, we mean, first of all, the Internet as a special communicative medium. In 1994 the first web resources in Russian were created, most of which still exist and are regularly updated. Today, the Internet is a complex multilevel structure for the dissemination and consumption of information, where socio-political media coexist with social
media, thematic sites with portals, and blogs with news feeds, and communication is a major part of it.
2. Materials and methods
Verbal aggression (or verbal bullying) is a form of psychological aggression that includes yelling at the victim provider or making sarcastic or offensive remarks, using obscene or taboo vocabulary. As a method of study the following classification of verbal bullying (Table 1) is used (Archer, Coyne, 2005).
Table1. Classification of verbal bullying
Name Definition
Physical-active-direct Striking another person, beating or injuring in some way.
Physical-active-indirect Setting mini traps in order to destroy or injure the enemy. Persuading someone to attack your victim.
Physical-passive-direct Desire to physically prevent the other person from reaching the desired goal or engaging in the desired activity (for example, locking him down in a room or blocking the way).
Physical-passive-indirect Refusal to perform the necessary tasks (for example, refusal to free the territory or the room) in order to prevent the person from entering it.
Verbal-active-direct Verbal abuse or humiliation of another person face-to-face.
Verbal-active-indirect Verbal abuse or humiliation of another person in virtual space. Spreading vicious slander or gossip about another person in social networks.
Verbal-passive-direct Refusal to talk with another person, to answer questions or to give information, etc. in daily activities, in real life.
Verbal-passive-indirect Refusal to provide certain verbal explanations (for example, refusal to speak out in defense of a person who is undeservedly criticized) in virtual space.
According to this classification, we are dealing mostly with verbal bullying which is a symbolic form of aggression in the form of causing psychological harm using mainly vocal (screaming, tone change) and verbal components of speech (invective, insults, etc.). From all verbal forms of aggression we have chosen verbal-active-indirect and verbal-passive-indirect ones as we consider only media mediated kinds of bullying and hate speech.
Besides the above classification we can consider open or hidden verbal aggression. Open verbal aggression is manifested by a clear intention to inflict communicative damage to the addressee and is expressed in obvious humiliating forms (swearing, screaming). Such behavior often tends to turn into physical aggression when the aggressor shamelessly invades the recipient's personal space (the so called transfers of aggression). Latent verbal aggression is a systematic and derogatory pressure on the addressee, but without the open manifestation of hostile emotions.
General characteristics of verbal bullying:
1. Verbal bullying destroys. It is especially destructive when the aggressor pretends that nothing is happening. The victim feels aggression, but his feelings or opinion are not taken into account which is even more painful because of the feeling of confusion and disappointment.
2. Verbal bullying strikes at a victim's self-esteem and abilities. They believe that something is wrong with them, with their abilities.
3. Verbal bullying can be open (angry attacks and insults) or hidden (very invisible and gradual, brainwashing). Open aggression is usually accusations of something that the victim has never committed. Latent aggression - stealth aggression, is even more destructive. The purpose of such aggression is to subjugate the victim imperceptibly.
4. Verbal bullying is by nature manipulative and seeks to control a victim. Usually the victims do not understand that they are being controlled and manipulated.
5. Verbal bullying is insidious. The bully shows contempt and devaluation so the victim's self-esteem drops significantly, the victim loses self-confidence consciously or unconsciously.
6. Verbal bullying is unpredictable. Unpredictability is one of the main characteristics of verbal aggression. The victim is literally knocked out and rutted, confused, shocked by jokes, comments full of sarcasm.
7. Verbal bullying is the problem of building relationships if it is hard to come to a compromise. In relations where verbal aggression exists, there is no conflict to resolve. The problem is the very fact of aggression, and this issue cannot be resolved
8. Verbal bullying contains a double message. There is a constant contrast between what the aggressor says and his true feelings.
9. Verbal bullying has a strong tendency to intensify; it becomes more intense, frequent and takes on more and more sophisticated forms. In many cases, verbal bullying turns into physical aggression, which, in turn, also does not begin immediately, but gradually, with "inadvertent" shocks, kicks, bangs, blows, etc., which then turn into direct beating. As verbal aggression intensifies turning into physical violence, the aggressor begins to invade the personal space of the victim. The level of aggressiveness is growing rapidly and the reasons for it may be different, from the growing crime in the country to the level of modern schoolchildren's education.
3. Discussion
The concept of verbal bullying in media discourse. As an open, most influential sphere (Klushina, 2014), media fill verbal gaps, change value guidelines in the actualized areas of public life. So, before the beginning of the XXI century, the concept of verbal bullying was reduced to comments exchange, jargon and dialectal vocabulary and some obscene words and phrases, breaking of political correctness. In a stereotyped view, only a criminal could use threats, blackmailing and criminal vocabulary online. Such a narrow interpretation was changed by the efforts of the media to a more adequate one - the fusion of power with crime (Efremova, 2006). The updated concept reflects a new phenomenon - a mixture of verbal bullying and hate speech. The media replicated the figurative and expressive components of the concept in metaphors with signs (visualization), as well as in words known as hate speech.
There are some ideal theories (or theories of ideal communicative action), and one of them belongs to Jürgen Habermas. Its analysis should be carried out not only from the point of view of linguistics, but also from the point of view of political philosophy. J. Habermas insisted that communication — whether public or private — should always be built on the principle of a dialogue (Finlayson, 2004). Dialogue is a situation in which two free entities enter, recognizing each other as equal. Two people who are confident that they freely enter into communication and that they will not influence each other by force or through any administrative resource. They enter into communication in order to achieve some goal, and not to turn to the process of an aggressive debate. They hope not for a pure compromise, but for joint assistance, co-creation in the production of some kind of cultural and social norms. J. Habermas (Habermas, 1981) insisted that such communication should be characteristic of any public and social activities.
Bullying as communication is the result of an unequal power dynamics or imbalance of power or strength — the strong attacking the weak, so there is no equality in such a dialogue. It can happen in different ways: through physical violence (face-to-face), verbal abuse (in person or online), or the management of relationships (spreading rumors, humiliation, and exclusion). It is usually prolonged (most bullies are repeat offenders) and widespread (a bully targets multiple victims) (Allcott, Gentzkow, 2017). Bullying is known as mean, hurtful behavior that occurs repeatedly in a relationship. By verbal bullying we mean any insult expressed in verbal form. It causes negative ideas about the victim, violates the effectiveness of interpersonal interaction. Verbal bullying is manifested in verbal expressions of a rude form, insults, threats or the use of appropriate intonations of speech, if used in face-to-face communication (Makarova, Osadchaya, 2019).
Because of the Internet development, blogs, online games or social networks (Gabielkov et al., 2016), physical bullying has given way to a verbal one, this one is called cyber-bullying. It is easy to be mean online, writing from an unidentified account anonymously or talking to the victim from a fake account or using a nickname in a game. It is also easy without seeing victim's emotional reaction, taking no responsibilities for the consequences of such bullying. Cyber-bullying, or bullying in cyberspace, involves haranguing someone by spreading mean words, lies, and false rumors through e-mails, text messages, and social media posts. Sexist, racist, and homophobic messages create a hostile atmosphere, even when not directly targeting a child.
Verbal bullying in the media (de Lenne et al., 2020) is now becoming increasingly threatening. In a sense, when it comes to bullying, the Internet has turned the world into a "big village" - it's almost impossible to hide from cyber-bullying. In some ways, when it comes to bullying, the Internet has made the world more rural. In the pre-Internet era, any bullying ended as soon as a person left the uncomfortable environment in which he did not feel safe, now electronic communications have penetrated into all spheres of human activity; study, work, social life, leisure, hobbies, entertainment depend on how many and what means of communication people use (Closson, Bond, 2019). If people are being insulted on the Facebook page (Winter, 2020), all social networks (Hobbs et al., 2019) are aware of this fact; as long as they have access to the network; a continuous stream of notifications leaves them vulnerable to a cyber bully. Physical bullying may not have become more common - a recent review of international data suggests that its number has dropped by ten percent worldwide. But getting away from verbal cyber-bullying has become more difficult, as a bully is difficult to identify, since he uses the anonymity of the Internet with impunity and can be lost in the vastness of virtual space. Several studies show that even just the impact of abusive words in the media can lead to children becoming more physically aggressive. Verbal bullying is a type of aggression that occurs among children and adults, men and women, at home, at work and at school. The aggressor deliberately tries to upset the victim by teasing and insulting, spreading dirty rumors. There are several types of aggressors, their motives are very different. Depending on the motive, the ways to cope with a bully differ. The first type of aggressor is not compassionate for the feelings of other people and is closed in his own world. Despite the fact that his level of self-esteem seems high and that he acts with great confidence, aggressor of this type often suffers from narcissism; his excessive self-esteem in most cases does not correspond to reality (Swearer, Hymel, 2015).
The second type of aggressor is heavily influenced by the social behavior of other people. Despite the fact that he may be depressed and have a very low self-esteem, he takes part in verbal bullying in order to assert himself and to gain higher status in his social group (Tuzel, Hobbs, 2017). This type of bullying is widespread among children and adolescents who are easily influenced by peers and seek their approval and support, using sometimes the wrong methods for this.
The third type of an aggressor is the one who acts under the influence of impulse. This type hardly manages to keep from insulting other people, even when he is rebuffed. This type of aggression is popular among schoolchildren, impulsive aggression is sometimes a sign that the child suffers from a lack of attention or is overly active. Although anyone can fall victim to verbal bullying, there are special types of people and situations that motivate the aggressor.
Firstly, the victims may experience depression, have low self-esteem, they have a loss of interest in life and habitual activities, but the aggressor is still envious of their successes, personal belongings or position in the social group. In addition, the victim may be bullied because he/she belongs to another cultural or ethnic group or has distinctive physical or physique features (freckles, red hair, large ears, the victim may be overweight or, conversely, be too thin for his age, wear glasses or braces), or belong to a certain religion or nationality (Muslims in a Christian setting can be an example). Victims who are regularly subjected to verbal bullying are not always weak and helpless, but the peculiarity of the situation provokes different actions. If a teenager is bullied at school, it is advisable for parents to teach him how not to become an easy target for ridicule, how not to create dangerous situations or give reasons for bullying and how in case of danger to avoid conflict. In severe cases, parents should involve school personnel or even police in solving the problem (Makarova, 2019).
Cases of bullying at school age attract much more attention of psychologists and educators, but the existence of bullying in adults cannot be underestimated, since aggressors can have a serious impact on the self-esteem of already formed personalities. Adults at risk in the workplace must learn to anticipate conflict and avoid incidents (Friesem, 2019). Positive self-esteem also contributes to the development of self-confidence, which restrains the aggressor. If you can't cope with aggression without help, you need to involve leaders and managers. The inescapability of "cyber bullying" has huge consequences not just for children but also for adults. While workplace bullying is still a new field of study, adults seem to experience bullying just as much as children and adolescents do.
Verbal bullying unlike physical violence is a type of hostility or aggression which can happen equally with children or adults, males or females, at home, at school, at work or in online
environment. The bully, who is also referred to as the aggressor, deliberately tries to verbally upset the victim through taunting and teasing. Self-esteem and a positive self-image of the victim may suffer; these two also project self-confidence which suffers greatly. If verbal abuse in the workplace or at school cannot be dealt with individually, it may be necessary to involve management or teachers and parents. Verbal bullying, or bullying with cruel spoken words, involves ongoing name-calling, threatening, and making disrespectful comments about someone's attributes (appearance, religion, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, etc.) (Makarova, 2019).
Freedom in a democratic society should be the same for everyone. An imposing on the freedom of other people may have an explicit, direct physical form - bullying by action or physical aggression. But violence can not only be physical, but emotional and psychological, the forms of which are verbal bullying and hate speech. Emotional violence is associated with the impact on the psyche of the victim, causing psychological trauma through verbal abuse or threats, harassment, intimidation, which deliberately cause emotional insecurity. The victim of verbal bullying may suffer from the post-traumatic stress disorder as much as victims of physical abuse. It is to this form that verbal bullying can be attributed, where the voice serves as an instrument (insulting nicknames that constantly refer to the victim, name-calling, teasing, making up and spreading insulting rumors and gossip, etc.). Verbal bullying is often referred to as social exclusion, that is, unwillingness to communicate with a boycotted person. It was proved that isolation itself can cause a feeling of helplessness and lack of control over life and circumstances, which leads to the most persistent psychological problems in the present and future. The world of a bullying victim becomes an isolated, small place (whether it is home or a personal computer) that cannot be protected. There is no place for the victim where they feel safe and secure. If the dynamics of bullying becomes difficult to contain and / or ignore, then this situation can lead to suicidal behavior of the victim. To experience verbal bullying, unfortunately, is a very often life experience. Many young people hear nicknames or insults daily at school, college or outside, which cannot but affect their mental health (Kubiszewski et al., 2019). But this is not the worst. Very often, verbal bullied victims also turn to hatred, verbal violence and threatening acts. In his turn the victim becomes an aggressor.
4. Results
Verbal bullying is often aimed at a person or group of people on the basis of such formal characteristics as race, religion, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability or gender; minorities are most often bullied.
Examples are: "I wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger."
"All white people are racist. Start from this reference point, or you've already failed" (Facebook, 2017).
"Dissidents destroyed our country, first the Russian Empire, then the Soviet Union, now they are destroying the whole of humanity, they should be killed" (Makeout, 2017).
"Now that Trump is a president, I'm going to shoot you and all the blacks I can find"
"Women are like grass, they need to be beaten/cut regularly."
"We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves."
"You're Asian, right? When they see your eyes you are going to be deported" (written to a 13-year-old girl).
"You are going back to where you came from. Otherwise, we'll punish you" (written to a 20-year-old Latino young man).
"I will punish all females for the sin of Eve."
"You're really, really fat, and so is your mom" (one child to another child).
"You're a liar."
"Feminists are all liars." Then there are the threats of rape, dismemberment, death, threats that include the family and children in some cases.
"Say that again and I'll hit you!"
Hate speech as a factor of hostility and intolerance. Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and inflict great pain. In the case of hate speech, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker or using some other kind of violence in response. We have to choose a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.
Hate speech is a communication that carries no meaning other than the expression of hatred for some group, especially in circumstances in which the communication is likely to provoke violence. It is an incitement to hatred primarily against a group of persons defined in terms of race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and the like. Hate speech can be any form of expression regarded as offensive to racial, ethnic and religious groups and other discrete minorities or to women.
Hate speech is mostly about imposing on the freedom of others. In a democratic society, you are free to walk down the street, but not to keep others from doing so. Americans like to say, "Freedom for your fist ends where my face begins". Like physical violence, hate speech can also be an imposition on the freedom of others. That is because language has a psychological effect imposed physically — on the neural system, with long-term crippling effects.
How would you feel if someone said the following to you?
"Moron!", "You're garbage!", 'You're a disgrace!", "Go away and die!", "You're ugly.", "You're fat and ugly", "You're aging badly", "You're stupid."
Like physical violence, hateful statements are an imposing on other people's freedom because such an emotional impact, although it does not leave visible marks on the body, has deep psychological consequences that may manifest themselves over time. The abusive context activates thought, changes the thought process, cause the thought revision, creating constant stress, fear and distrust - the physical consequences of non-physical events. Emotional harm can be even more serious than a punch, as it affects the ability to think and act, forms the victim's uncertain behavior for a long time.
Hate speech in the public sphere takes place online and offline, and affects young girls and boys, women and men. We also see hate speech attacking vulnerable groups like people with disabilities and other minority groups. Social media and the Internet have opened up for many new arenas for exchanging opinions. Freedom of speech is an absolute value in any democracy, both for the public and for the media. At the same time, opinions and debates challenge us as hate speech are spread widely and frequently on new platforms for publishing. Hate speech may cause fear and can be the reason why people withdraw from the social networks. We all benefit if we foster an environment where everybody is able to express their opinions without experiencing hate speech.
Hate speech is a concept that is hard to translate into Russian, the translation sounds like "hate rhetoric". The specificity of this translation is that it was produced by linguists. For example, "hostility rhetoric" is a linguistic term in its foundations, and linguists who deal with this problem are looking for those rhetorical figures, paths, elements of an artistic language or a language of aggression that turn any statement into hate speech. When we talk about translating "hostile language," we recall the comments that modern media communication experts leave.
The international experience is different: there is a European type of reaction to such a phenomenon, also there is an American one, but they are all based on a very important phenomenon. Hate speech is a manifestation of discrimination at the verbal or discursive level, at the level of communication in relation to some person who is considered to belong to a group that is unworthy of quality and equal treatment. In this sense, hate speech is a variant of discrimination against any minority. Hate speech is a communication that carries no meaning other than the expression of hatred for some group, especially in circumstances in which the communication is likely to provoke violence. It is an incitement to hatred primarily against a group of persons defined in terms of race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and the like. Hate speech can be any form of expression regarded as offensive to racial, ethnic and religious groups and other discrete minorities or to women (Guardian, 2016).
It is possible to determine a number of general characteristics inherent in media content intended for social networks: - visualization (visual forms more and more dominate text ones or replace them); - information condensation (reduction of the information load of the message, both textual and visual); - convergence (visual and textual element tend to merge into a single form), - generalization (treating a person as a part of a bigger entity, a group or a Nation). These phenomena are inherent in the content of modern media and have arisen exclusively under the influence of distribution channels. This trend is not limited to additional platforms, but more often occurs when creating traditional media content. At the same time, media that exist exclusively in the system of social networks cannot be affected by this phenomenon due to the lack of motherboards. They are limited to a social network, which frees up the conventions of traditional media and opens up a field for experimentation.
Examples of hate speech are:
"All Jews are greedy", "All Muslims are terrorists deep inside", "The Palestinians are beasts walking on two legs", "Your Muslim headscarf isn't allowed anymore. Why don't you tie it around your neck and hang yourself with it?"(Anonymous), "What should we expect from immigrants? Let's send them back to their stinking jungles" (Guardian, 2017), "Immigrants infiltrate Russia like an infection", "In the film industry, fagots have been running for a long time!" (Pikabu, 2019)
It is very difficult to detain a person who makes statements based on hatred, which has the basis (source) of intolerance. On the one hand, it is difficult to judge a separate statement, how much it affects the public, political nature of everything that happens. On the other hand, there are attempts to regulate not the entire public space, but to protect a certain number of people by protecting them from insults, various crimes that degrade their honor and dignity.
5. Conclusion
Self-esteem is a belief in one's own worth and ability to manage one's life. There is a direct link between verbal bullying and self-esteem and it is not surprising that bullying victims in most cases have low self-esteem. The belief that aggressors themselves suffer from low self-esteem is common, but studies have shown that this is a false statement. Bullying is defined as a form of humiliation, a physical, verbal or emotional, of a weaker personality. The victim's weakness can be psychological or physical. Studies have not confirmed whether the victims of bullying are such because of their low self-esteem, or whether the bullying itself causes one, or both. The effect of bullying on a person's self-esteem can be long-term. Insults will definitely have an effect on the target. Children who were bullied at school suffer from physiological and even physical problems and retain their perception of themselves as victims even when they become adults.
Some psychological theories of bullying suggest that the aggressor's need for bullying is due to a complete lack of self-esteem. According to these studies, aggressors also suffer low self-esteem problem, which may not have any reason, but is used by aggressors to justify their antisocial behavior. Very often, aggressors and their victims are considered in terms of interdependence. Physical and emotional aggressors stand out from the group of children at school, thereby attracting attention to themselves. However, growing up, they continue to be aggressors. Other people who have not experienced the joy of humiliating others decide to try this as an adult. In fact, many of them strive to become leaders of a collective or group. The desire to use power to gain superiority over others and the ability to humiliate them is a common corporate tactic in which it is difficult to distinguish between bullying and leadership style. Even when the cyber-bullying escalates to include threats and sexually explicit messages, it is still hard to ban people from insulting and humiliating honor and dignity. It's rather difficult to build an evidence base that will lead from the idea of a verbal crime to the idea that it is committed precisely on the basis of hatred, which has reason for intolerance.
Unfortunately, verbal bullying is not considered a crime in our country, since the very fact of such bullying is difficult to prove. Hate speech is also hard to identify. Some people explain that they are being patriotic, and that's the reason for their hatred. What we consider abusive will vary from person to person. The context in which something is said and who said it (to whom) are all factors that influence how we define verbal abuse. "We already punish hate speech that causes specific tangible harms: threats, harassment, incitement, and hate crimes. In contrast, even advocates of restricting psychically harmful hate speech acknowledge that free speech principles would nonetheless protect more subtle expressions of racism, sexism, and other bias" (Strossen, 2016).
In short, the overall picture suggests that the Internet provides all the opportunities for cyber-bullying and hate speech in the network, since it is easy to go unpunished and harder to identify. Those who in a different situation would never dare to insult and humiliate other people face-to-face have turned into bullies in the net. Therefore, the first step to preventing bullying among adults can be a simple introspection. An adult can always control what he says to other people and how he reacts to verbal abuse. Acting like everyone else and avoiding confrontation seems easier to most people than resisting aggression, but such incidents leave an indelible mark on their self-esteem.
Some steps can be taken to prevent verbal bullying in adolescents. Strategies for the prevention and intervention of parents and educators have been developed to protect children from
aggressors and teach them how to fix problems before escalating. There are eight types of coping strategies:
1. confrontation involves aggressive actions to change the balance of power in the situation;
2. keeping distance is removal from the situation and reducing its value to a reasonable minimum;
3. self-control is regulation of one's own feelings, reactions and emotions;
4. applying for social support, discussing a problem with someone, receiving emotional and informational support from peers, teachers and parents;
5. personal responsibility for everything that happens, understanding and recognition of everything that contributed to the problems, as well as an attempt to solve them independently (locus control);
6. avoidance is behavior that is aimed at ignoring the problem;
7. planned approach to solving the problem is detailed analysis of the problem, consideration of all possible ways to solve it;
8. positive reassessment of the attitude to the current situation.
Recognizing the flexible and dynamic nature of bullying, we consider the consequences of bullying for both the victim and the aggressor. In particular, we see participation in bullying as a stressful event for both parties, acting as a catalyst for the stress relationship between bullying, victimization, and psychosocial difficulties. Against this background, we believe that effective measures to prevent bullying and coping strategies of intervention should take into account individual characteristics, protective factors, as well as the context in which bullying occurs in order to prevent it and promote healthy social relations in any team.
Future research on verbal bullying and hate speech will allow recognizing how verbal bullying and hate speech arise, how from specific scandals, aggressions, and violations of another person's private space the idea of intolerance arises, and then, we will be able to cross disciplinary restrictions and borders, for example, linguistics and conflict studies, psychology and pedagogies to see the picture as a whole.
The outcome of such a research is that any hate speech practice or verbal bullying experience should build up the potential resistance to insults. A person, who does not defend oneself against any aggressive social environment, cannot be independent. Therefore, when discussing the problems of verbal bullying and hate speech, recommendations should be made that can be used in real everyday life equally by children and adolescents, and by adults. It is important to assist children and adolescents to learn effective and ethical use of media and technology both for educational and social functions.
6. Acknowledgements
The current study is supported by RFBR project No 18-29-22093.
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