Research Article
Mirian Agus, Maria Lidia Mascia, Maria Assunta Zanetti, Simona Perrone, Dolores Rollo, Maria Pietronilla Penna
CONT ED TECHNOLOGY, Volume 13, Issue 3, Article No: ep310
ABSTRACT
In the literature there are more and more works dealing with cyberbullying and adolescents’ perception of this phenomenon. In particular, we are interested in cyberbullying and the effects of cyberbullying on adolescent life. What is more, in 2020 the impact of COVID-19 has increased the digital presence of cyberbullying behaviours. This phenomenon is extremely complex, since it is multicomponential and multifactorial, and many components act on it. Starting with an analysis of the literature, this work offers preliminary data towards the validation of a self-reporting questionnaire; it was administered to 650 adolescents, to evaluate their perceptions of the victims of cyberbullying. The questionnaire consisted of 33 items; Principal Component Analysis was applied, which identified the dimensions resuming the items’ variability. The findings confirmed the multidimensional nature of the issue covered by the questionnaire and highlighted three psychological dimensions: Internalisation, Counterbalance and Marginalisation. The results support the structure of the questionnaire, useful to quickly collect information about adolescents’ perception of cybervictimisation. The assessment of this information might help teachers, educators, and tutors to formulate targeted interventions to combat the spread of cyberbullying aimed for example at improving emotional intelligence, starting from the construction of emotional contagion.
Keywords: cyberbullying, adolescent representations, cybervictims, assessment
Research Article
Jale Balaban-Sali
CONT ED TECHNOLOGY, Volume 3, Issue 4, pp. 265-277
ABSTRACT
This study examined new media literacy skills of university students based on Jenkins and his colleagues’ classification. Toward this purpose, an online Likert scale was administered to a sample (n=170). This scale included a multi-component understanding of media literacy such as tackling the consumption of media messages and the original creation of multimedia material. The Cronbach’s Alpha reliability coefficient of the scale was 0,93. The instrument was structured around three main sections; demographics, media use characteristics, and new media literacies (NMLs). The third section aimed to assess participants’ new media literacy skills by presenting them 60 items about their social and cultural modes of engagement, online interaction, and media consumption and creation patterns. The statements were conceptually built around the 12 NMLs skills identified by Jenkins and his colleagues. These skills are: Play, appropriation, distributed cognition, collective intelligence, judgment, transmedia navigation, networking, negotiation, and visualization. The results of the study showed that individuals who spent more time on Internet, social media, and blogging had the highest NMLs levels. Furthermore, young participants’ NMLs levels were higher than those over the age of 32.
Keywords: New media literacies, Social media skills, New media literacy assessment, Digital literacies, Measuring new literacies