Digitally brave: Countering cyberbullying by stimulating positive bystander behavior through an interactive narrative intervention

Adolescents are avid users of social media, offering them both opportunities and threats. One of the threats is cyberbullying or bullying via information and communication technologies, which can be defined as aggressive acts that are performed intentionally and repeatedly over time towards a victim who cannot easily defend themselves (Olweus, 1993; Smith et al., 2008). Cyberbullying can have a substantial impact on the well-being of its victims and bystanders (Kwan et al., 2020). Bystanders can play a crucial role in encouraging or discouraging cyberbullying, for instance by reporting hurtful incidents or showing their disagreement, but often remain passive (Karasavva & Mikami, 2024). Research has indicated reasons why adolescents remain passive when witnessing cyberbullying, including finding it difficult to assess whether something is just a joke or has the intention to really hurt somebody and not knowing how to react (Van Cleemput et al., 2014). Studies on effective interventions stimulating positive online bystander behavior, for instance, by reporting or providing constructive counterspeech, are much needed. The present study wants to contribute to the growing body of research on cyberbullying interventions directed towards bystanders by developing and testing an intervention presented as an interactive narrative. This format has been shown to be an effective intervention strategy (Scholl et al., 2022; Zhou et al., 2020). Therefore, this study sets out to develop and test an interactive narrative intervention to teach and promote positive bystander behavior in the context of cyberbullying. We have developed a role-playing interactive narrative allowing players to adopt the bystander perspective and practice various ways in which they can respond to cyberbullying (e.g., comforting, reporting, non-aggressively confronting the bully). This approach is tested in a cluster-randomized controlled trial in Dutch secondary schools (first and second grade). To test the effectiveness of the interactive narrative, 2 extra intervention conditions were developed: a non-interactive version of the interactive narrative and an expository text with the same information but without the narrative. These three conditions were randomly distributed over different school classes. In each class, the pupils got the same intervention condition. Within the classroom, each pupil participated in the study individually. The DVs in this study were persuasive effects (beliefs, attitudes and intentions regarding cyberbullying and positive bystander behavior) (Moyer‐Gusé & Dale, 2017) and perceived self-efficacy (feeling confident about executing positive bystander behavior) (Sargioti et al., 2023). Other measured variables were outcome expectancies and perceived similarity with the main character (Social Cognitive Theory; Bandura, 1977, 2004), subjective norm (Theory of Planned Behavior: Ajzen, 1991; Pabian & Vandebosch, 2014), narrative experience (identification with and empathy for the main character and transportation to the storyworld; Appel et al., 2015; de Graaf et al., 2012; Fabi et al., 2019; Huang & Fung, 2024), perceived realism of the narrative (Cho et al., 2014), trait empathy (Davis, 1983; Ingoglia et al., 2016) and previous experience with cyberbullying (Pabian et al., 2016). The measurements were done right before the intervention (T0), right after the intervention (T1) and 5-7 weeks after the intervention (T2). In total, approximately 1000 pupils participated in the study divided over 78 classes and 8 schools at nearly all school levels (vmbo kader to vwo). With the T2 data collection still running at the moment, we do not have the final results yet but these will be available at the conference. Preliminary analyses do indicate that the interactive narrative condition outperforms the traditional narrative and the expository text regarding persuasive effects (beliefs and intentions) and self-efficacy. The full results will be presented at the conference. This intervention study will help in optimizing cyberbullying interventions, stimulating positive bystander behavior and ultimately bringing victimization rates down.


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