Additionally, a respondent discussed a random person who signed in to a chat room and pretended to be the
respondent to harass their friends. This occurred on several occasions before the person quit. A third participant
stated they were “rick rolled.” Defined by Wikipedia (2010) as being directed to a Web link unrelated to the topic
being discussed. The Web link actually takes the user to the Rick Astley music video, “Never Gonna Give you Up.”
Discussion
This study explores a little examined area of the undergraduate experience. The dearth of literature in this
area left this researcher with only two similar studies to evaluate. The preliminary analysis of the 120 participants
indicated that the majority (54%) of respondents knew someone who had been cyberbullied. One hundred percent of
the males surveyed indicated they knew someone who had been cyberbullied.
Eleven percent had personally experienced cyberbullying, with 57 % having been cyberbullied less than
four times, 29 % four to ten times and 14 % over ten times. Finn’s (2004) findings support the results since 10 – 15
% of his respondents received email or Instant Messaging that “threatened, insulted, or harassed.”
When specific examples of incidents of undesirable and obsessive communication through the computer or
other electronic means were queried 33 % of respondents had received unsolicited tokens of affection, 34 % had
someone pretend to be someone he or she wasn’t and 30 % experienced excessively ‘needy’ or demanding
messages. Twenty-three % of respondents had received pornographic or obscene images. This is relatively lower
than Finn’s (2004) finding of 58.7%. Finn did not query if the pornography was sent directly to respondent or via
group messages.