Victimization in traditional bullying and cyberbullying among Italian preadolescents. An investigation in Emilia Romagna, Tuscany and Calabria

In recent years, bullying has been examined in relation to the growth in the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) by adolescents, opening up a new line of research on “cyberbullying”. Two relevant issues in cyberbullying research are the relationship between cyberbullying and traditional bullying and the nature of cyberbullying phenomenon, with its links to the accessibility and characteristics of the technologies involved. According to national surveys, Italy shows a puzzling access to ICT, and a few studies have investigated with comparable tools the diffusion of cyberbullying across different areas of the Country. In this study we aimed at describing the diffusion of traditional bullying (direct and indirect) and cyberbullying (mobile and Internet) among Italian middle school students from different geographical areas of Italy with respect to the roles of bully and victim. A second aim was to examine the predictors of direct, indirect, mobile and Internet victimization focusing on sociodemographic and contextual variables such as gender, Region, mother’s and father’s level of education and school climate, and for cyberbullying victimization the access to ICTs and the event of being a victim or a bully in traditional bullying. A questionnaire was administered to 1000 Italian adolescents (mean age = 12.3 years) from three Italian regions (Emilia Romagna, Tuscany and Calabria). Findings showed higher percentages of adolescents involved in indirect bullying, followed by direct bullying, cyberbullying via mobile phone and via the Internet. Logistic regression analyses showed that gender was significantly predictive of victimization but with different trends across bullying types: males were more likely to be victims of direct bullying, females of indirect bullying and mobile cyberbullying, while this variable had not a predictive role on Internet victimization. A negative school climate perception was a significant predictor for direct, indirect and mobile victimization, but not for Internet victimization. Moreover, being involved as a bully or a victim in traditional bullying increases the risk of being victim of cyberbullying (both via mobile phone and via the Internet). These results point out that bullying and cyberbullying were diffuse in Italy across different regions, with a relevant continuity between traditional bullying and cyberbullying in particular between indirect and mobile bullying, suggesting that virtual contexts may reflect social interactions that preadolescents may have in personal offline relationship.