The wide availability of information and communication technology poses a risk for modern forms of peer bullying, such as cyberbullying. Despite a big number of available articles in this field, there is a lack of systematic research aimed at elementary school students. The purpose of this master's thesis was to explore the understanding of concept of cyberbullying and the perception of its seriousness from adolescent’s perspective. We were interested in whether students would correctly recognize situations of cyberbullying, how serious they would perceive them to be, and what would their emotional and behavioral responses be if they found themselves experiencing the situation. We also checked how often different online situations happen to them. 412 students of the 7th, 8th and 9th grades of primary school (59 % girls) participated in the research. The research had a quantitative and a qualitative part. The students first completed an online questionnaire, which includes 10 fictional situations of cyberbullying and questions related to the perception and experience of the situations. This was followed by a separate implementation of focus groups with a few students from each grade. The results showed that most of the students correctly identified which situations are examples of cyberbullying, taking into account the criteria of the traditional definition of bullying and the perspective of the person experiencing the situation. A significant difference between the sexes in the frequency of experiencing cyberbullying was found at online trickery, which is more often experienced by girls. Students perceived cyberbullying as a serious phenomenon and they rated a video of a physical attack as the most serious form. Girls perceived all situations as more serious compared to boys and report more distress when experiencing the situations. While boys most often reported feeling nothing or feeling angry after cyberbullying, girls reported experiencing more negative emotions. Students most frequently reported using support-seeking, assertive and technical strategies, with some significant differences between genders and student age. The findings are important for raising public awareness of the seriousness of cyberbullying and its consequences, and can serve as a basis for the design of target-oriented intervention programs.
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