Victim blaming in cyberbullying The effects of privacy settings on victim blaming

Abstract

Worldwide, adolescents and adults are victims of cyberbullying. One of the most common means of cyberbullying are insulting messages that are often spread via social networking sites. A neglected phenomenon when studying cyberbullying and social networking sites is victim blaming. Victim blaming describes the attribution of (a share) of responsibility for an offense to the victim. The study analyzes the influence of Facebook privacy settings on victim blaming in cyberbullying. Besides studying victim characteristics, the study also assesses characteristics of the bystanders. Therefore, we conducted an online experiment with 126 participants who were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions in a 2 (privacy setting: public vs. private) x 2 (victim's sex: female vs. male) design. The results show that victim blaming increases when the victim has a public Facebook profile compared to a private Facebook profile. However, empathetic bystanders attribute less blame to the victim than bystanders low in empathy.