What is the PARTICIPATE Project?

The Problem

Online bullying has become a global societal problem, disproportionately affecting girls and women, people of colour, LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities and other protected identity categories. For youth, this problem has become exacerbated during the Covid-19 pandemic, with many learning and social activities moving online. Parents are central to creating a safe and democratic digital world for young people, yet they have been largely excluded from anti-cyberbullying research and actions. PARTICIPATE will help to fill this substantial gap in the international research by supporting 10 new PhDs, led by Europe’s leading experts in anti-cyberbullying.

Our Objectives

PARTICIPATE brings together Europe’s top experts in anti-cyberbullying to build a research and training network that will:

• Create world-class Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) with transferable multi-disciplinary and intersectoral skills necessary to work with parents, youth, teachers and other professionals to more effectively prevent and reduce cyberbullying across Europe
• Introduce a vital new dimension into cyberbullying research by investigating the largest group of parents ever studied
• Harness the knowledge and perspectives being developed in different countries, academic disciplines, youth organisations and technology companies, uniting them in a powerful, strategic collaboration in the fight against cyberbullying in Europe
• Develop sufficient expertise on parents to create a state-of-the-art toolkit for teachers and other professionals working with parents to prevent cyberbullying

These objectives will be achieved by a combination of individual and collaborative research work, non- academic secondments and workshops on scientific and complementary applied skills facilitated by the academic and non-academic composition of the consortium. 10 Early Stage Researchers are not only undertaking research on the most urgent questions in the field of cyberbullying, but are also working on the ground with practical organisations, and developing inter-disciplinary research designs through secondments in other European countries.

Similarly, the network partners are developing new expertise through extensive knowledge exchange on the import, nature and extent of parental contribution to and prevention of cyberbullying across Europe.

Work Packages

PARTICIPATE brings together many of the world’s leading cyberbullying scholars and non-academic experts, involving the largest group of parents ever investigated. It is structured around eight work packages, four of which are research focused. These are strategically designed to both target and cross-sect the four key areas of concern central to online bullying:

– Origins and Impacts of Cyberbullying

– Parents and Teachers/Professionals: Interventions and Communication

– Technology, Social Media and Online Bullying and

– Societal and Cross-National Aspects of Cyberbullying

The 10 PhD Projects

Our 10 Early Career Researchers are working on cutting-edge research projects in Europe’s top centres for anti-bullying  research:

Deniz Çelikoğlu, DCU Anti-bullying Centre – Supervisor: Prof. Debbie Ging- “Parents’ Experiences with Their Children’s Involvement in The Manosphere”

Ebru Ozbek, University of Stavanger. Supervisor: Prof. Simona Caravita – “Developing knowledge about consequences of cyberbullying experiences and schools’ action, also involving parents”

Luca Janka Laszlo, Parents International. Main supervisor: Eszter Salamon, Co-supervisors: Simona Carla Silvia Caravita, Hildegunn Fandrem – “The Impact of adult bullying on children becoming cyberbullies”

Luisa Morello, Norwegian Centre for Learning Environment and Behavioural Research in Education. Supervisor: Prof. Hildegunn Fandrem – “Cyberbullying involving indigenous and immigrant youths and the role of parents”

Meghmala Mukherjee, DCU Anti-bullying Centre, Supervisor: Prof. James O’Higgins Norman- “Apps for Good: Using Cybersafety Apps to Support Parental Mediation in Cyberbullying”

Anastasiia Petrova, University of Turku. Supervisor: Prof. Christina Salmivalli- “Gender, diversity and parental involvement in cyberbullying interventions”

Giorgia Scuderi, Danish School of Education, Aarhus University. Supervisor: Prof. Dorte_Marie Søndergaard – “Young people and parents negotiating and policing gender through online bullying”

Isabel Maria Machado Da Silva, DCU Anti-bullying Centre. Supervisor: Dr. Audrey Bryan – “Enhancing family-school partnerships to prevent on/offline forms of bullying”

Kainaat Maqbool, Dept of Communication and Media Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Supervisor: Prof. Liza Tsaliki – “Growing up as an African or Mixed-Race in Greece: Young People’s Experiences of (Cyber)Bullying”

Shan Hu, UiS, Supervisor: Prof. Dagmar Strohmeier – “The Importance of Measurement Issues on Prevalence Rates of Bullying and Cyberbullying in Large-scale Cross-national Datasets”

Projected outcomes
PARTICIPATE will have real-world impact by including parents in online bullying research, breaking through disciplinary orthodoxies and advancing new methods, enhancing intersectoral capacity, producing tangible outputs, shaping policy, and fostering cross-national cooperation. With greater knowledge about and involvement of parents, strategies to combat online bullying will become stronger, more holistic and more effective.

Copyright © 2022 Participate