There is a rich literature regarding cyberbullying, addressing its impact as well as strategies for preventing or minimising the phenomenon. However, historically, these have focused on children and the school context (those under 18), implicitly extending the physical environment into the digital. Significantly less attention has been directed towards the experience of young adults in Scotland (18-24) and digital life beyond the schoolyard. To discourage or prevent cyberbullying/bullying, is an ambition of the Scottish Government, primarily pursued through tactics addressing promoting a culture of respect in such online spaces; yet, there has been little discussion about what “feeling respected” means in an online space and how to encourage or facilitate this phenomenon among online users. This research project explores: how can Interaction Design be used as an approach to enable promoting feeling respected in an online space (or online respect) among young adults in Scotland in the context of cyberbullying.
To address the research question, I draw on evidence from my fieldwork where I engaged with six young adults (18-24 years old) and six key stakeholders. The research comprised two distinct but complementary phases of online fieldwork in response to the constraints imposed by Covid-19 and the wider consequences of the global pandemic. Adopting a co-design framework, where participants shared their knowledge, experiences, values, and thoughts on cyberbullying, online respect, and young adults coping strategies allowed a focus on participants’ experiences, emotional states and behaviours. This, in turn, allowed a focus on the factors that underpin online respect, through online interviews, asynchronous activities, and online workshops.
Data gathered from both phases of participation enabled me to provide anti-cyberbullying guidelines and recommendations for the policy level and establish an in-depth understanding of the role of digital technologies/online platforms in shaping young adults' relationships with the world that contribute to not feeling respected in an online space.
This PhD describes how an Interaction Design approach creates knowledge that brings an understanding and develops insights into online respect that contributes to psychology, social, and political disciplines from non-neutral digital technology viewpoints. Most prior studies stated that cyberbullying is school bullying transitioned to an online environment due to the youth's sociocultural dependence on digital technology and communications. In other words, they investigated this phenomenon similarly to school bullying from a technology-neutral perspective. The technology-neutral perspective means that digital media and online space don't appear to influence or play any roles in shaping online behaviour or disrespect, but the way in which online users choose to use digital technologies should be considered key to the experience of feeling respected in such “spaces.”
The Interaction Design approach in this research project provided a form of research engagement that focused on the influence of digital technologies and online space leading to online disrespect among young adults. The Interaction Design approach to investigating the roles digital technologies and online space play in shaping online users' behaviours allowed a focus upon the concepts of affordance and technological mediation theories. Affordance theory enabled a critical and socio-technical view on how digital technologies and online space might permit novel behaviours, distinct from those of “real life,” including online disrespect among young adults. Technological Mediation theory offers a conceptual vocabulary encompassing sociocultural and environmental views on how digital technologies and online space might mediate young adults' relationships with their surroundings (both online and offline). These theories have been central in identifying profound insights into how one might support or encourage online respect among young adults from a non-neutral digital technology and context-based perspective for psychologists and policy-makers.

A print copy of this thesis is available in the GSA library.