Abstract:

Bullying is defined as the act of repeatedly and intentionally causing harm to another person who feels helpless (i.e., the victim) against the perpetrator or group of perpetrators. These series of acts of physical and/or psychological violence have been reported to cause a negative impact on the victim on several aspects of his/her well-being and daily life. The problem of bullying in schools is particularly important, as students are in a sensitive age and consequences may negatively affect their adult lives too. Therefore, in the last few years this social problem has become an active area of research in several disciplines. Traditionally, studies have focused on determining the causes and effects of bullying on victims, the role of witnesses, or they have focused on profiling perpetrators. Due to these efforts, now we have a clearer picture on the role of victims, witnesses, and perpetrators. Despite this, there are still variables and factors whose effects on any of the three players we have not yet determined, and questions that remain unanswered. For instance, how can we effectively prevent the risk of bullying? How can we act once bullying has been identified?

Recently, multidisciplinary research teams have noticed the potential of ICT tools as catalysts for fighting bullying in schools. A range of ICT-based tools such as e-learning systems, intelligent tutoring systems, gamified applications, analytics, or even artificial intelligence have been proposed as technological assets against bullying. In this paper, we identify, categorize, and analyse the use of these ICT tools against bullying under a wide range of criteria such as their role (e.g., prevention, mitigation, detection, etc.), the type of technologies involved, the potential investment that is required, the target age of users, the place at which these tools are meant to be used, and strengths and weaknesses of each tool. Then, we discuss on potential areas of expansion for the use of ICT tools in the fight bullying, and we identify new potential areas of research.

Keywords:

Research on Technology in Education, Apps for education, bullying, ICT, school, barriers to learning.