“You can get cyberbullied by your friends”: Claiming authority to categorise a past event as bullying

Abstract

Bullying is an emotive term, one that carries substantial social and moral sanctions. It is also one that would usually not be expected in accounting for the actions of a friend. This chapter focuses on categorisation practices in a discussion between four children. The discussion focuses on a past event, in which two of the children present were involved, in the context of a classroom-based small group activity focused on their experiences of using social media. Both of the children who were involved in the event can be understood to have epistemic access and epistemic primacy in relation to the event under discussion. Where this shared epistemic access and primacy becomes problematic is when a dispute emerges over whether the event may be accounted for as cyberbullying or not. Authority becomes especially significant in the event of a dispute over knowledge claims. Whose account takes precedence? The analysis of member categorisation in this chapter concentrates on how children orient to relative epistemic and moral authority when there are competing claims to the epistemic terrain.