Preventing and Coping with (Cyber)bullying: Participatory Mapping towards Self-­‐regulatory Strategies

As part of the EMSOC project (User Empowerment in a Social Media Culture) that investigates the influence of social media on the (dis)empowerment of vulnerable individuals and groups, this report presents the first step of a research on combating (cyber)bullying. The goal of this research is to provide teachers with a (digital) toolkit to facilitate 9 to 10 year olds to become more self regulatory as a class group in preventing and coping with traditional bullying as well as cyberbullying. In line with the Participatory Design approach at the core of this research, we identified a set of preconditions for effectively combating (cyber)bullying and collected suggestions for how these preconditions can be created. For this purpose, we involved different experts and teachers in a series of participatory mapping sessions using the MAP-­it tool. The results should be seen as a metaphorical map, indicating roads, dangers and opportunities in the design process of the toolkit. Since children are important stakeholders as well, they will be actively involved as design partners in the next steps of the project.