Article:  https://cybercrimejournal.com/menuscript/index.php/cybercrimejournal/article/view/329/98

“Cyberbullying  and Cyberbullicide Ideation Among Jordanian College Students”

     This article describes the factors and impacts of cyberbullying in a group of students located in the country of Jordan. This study utilized carefully formulated questionnaires in order to collect data from both students who had been cyberbullied and from students who had allegedly perpetrated cyberbullying. After the questionnaires were distributed and statistics were collected and analyzed, it was concluded that about 26% of the sampled students had experienced cyberbullying, 73% knew at least one victim, and around 64% knew at least one perpetrator of cyberbullying. This topic relates to cybersecurity because cyberbullying is intrinsically a cyber offense, as it is specifically bullying which occurs through the internet. As with my first article review, this article also relates to the human aspect of cybersecurity, as the causes and effects of cyberbullying are purely human based – computers do not decide to bully people online, people do. Additionally, this article touches on the concept of ethics in cybersecurity, a major principle in the study of cybersecurity. While it would be great for the government to police cyberbullying, it is a difficult task to accomplish without sacrificing ethics. The article describes that there are no laws in the country of Jordan to specifically penalize cyberbullying; laws have been recently made to punish “unauthorized” use of information systems. This is a way the Jordanian government has worked around the lack of cyberbullying law in order to safeguard its citizens from cyberbullying. As said before, the article uses questionnaires to collect its data. This is a form of both quantitative and qualitative data, but is also somewhat unreliable depending on the topic. In this case, it is possible that cyberbullies themselves were underrepresented; in a self reported questionnaire, it can be assumed that people may be hesitant or unwilling to report their own misdeeds. This may be somewhat counteracted by victims’ reporting of bullies themselves, however. The article does not compare its own data to historical data; it merely provides a contemporary viewpoint into the modern prevalence of cyberbullying in the opinion of the Jordanian college population. As a current statistical source, this article provides a solid starting point for future research in cyberbullying, its spread, and possible mitigation measures against cyberbullying. In conclusion, this article utilizes a questionnaire to determine the current situation regarding cyberbullying in and out of Jordan (the country, not myself) and will help to formulate mitigation strategies for cyberbullying now and in the future.