Towards user modelling in the combat against cyberbullying

Abstract

Friendships, relationships and social communications have all gone to a new level with new definitions as a result of the invention of online social networks. Meanwhile, alongside this transition there is increasing evidence that online social applications have been used by children and adolescents for bullying. State-of-the-art studies in cyberbullying detection have mainly focused on the content of the conversations while largely ignoring the users involved in cyberbullying. We hypothesis that incorporation of the users' profile, their characteristics, and post-harassing behaviour, for instance, posting a new status in another social network as a reaction to their bullying experience, will improve the accuracy of cyberbullying detection. Cross-system analyses of the users' behaviour - monitoring users' reactions in different online environments - can facilitate this process and could lead to more accurate detection of cyberbullying. This paper outlines the framework for this faceted approach. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.