Abstract:

Cyberbullying and cyber-aggression are a serious problem in today's school and in the lives of children and youth. Their behaviour and experience are shifted to online space as the process of digitizing society's life. Nowadays they are communicating with their classmates and peers mainly through social networks. According to the findings of Hinduja & Patchin (2008), victims and aggressors known each other from school, and according to Twyman et al. (2010) the most frequent victims of cyberbullying are children who are bullied even in the school environment or in the offline space in general. Cyberbullying is therefore perceived as a school problem, and schools need to take an active approach to this new phenomenon (Wölfer et al., 2014). Although research on cyberbullying issues has now increased, schools and teachers need to have a valid and reliable tool for diagnosing and monitoring cyberbullying in the classroom (Ortega-Barón et al., 2019). The topic of cyberbullying is highly actual in current educational research, as it is obvious by ongoing projects and evidence-based prevention or intervention programs. We record several programs for the intervention of aggression in adolescents e.g., Cyber program 2.0 (Garaigordobil & Martínez-Valderrey, 2015) and ConRed (Del Rey, & al., 2012) as well as some programs for prevention e.g., the Spanish program “Asegúrate”, TheNoTrap! program by Palladino et al. (2016), Media Heroes program by Similarly, Chaux and colleagues (2016). Good respectable results with prevention were achieved by Ortega-Barón et al. (2019) with Prev@cib program. Experimental validation has shown a significant reduction in bullying and victimization (including cyberspace) in the experimental groups. Israeli scientists Aizenkot and Kashy-Rosenbaum (2018) developed and validated the Safe Surfing Intervention Program. The program is aimed to reduce cyberbullying in WhatsApp class groups. Both bullying prevention programs and programs that are not primarily intended for online communication and interaction have proved their worth, e.g., Olweus' prevention program of bullying or social skills training (Fox Boulton, 2003). Wölfer et al. (2014) examined and proposed a model of the basic principles of each intervention program with a focus on reducing cyberbullying.

According to these authors, the programs should include:
- development of competences in the field of social skills and social knowledge;
- developing attitudes and awareness about the possible consequences of cyberbullying;
- developing social responsibility and improving the classroom climate;
- strategies for managing cyberbullying and for positive online communication.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to determine general characteristics of cyberbullying prevention and intervention methods and programs. All selected programs were assessed in relation to the above model of the basic principles. This study was conducted as a preliminary survey of 20 cyberbullying prevention and intervention programs. The results of this analysis do not provide information on the effectiveness of one information delivery method over another. We suggest that future research should address the efficacy of prevention and intervention programs in context of the basic principles and could also determinate other beneficial principles and fundamentals.

Keywords:

Cyberbullying, cyber-aggression, analysis, method, program, basic principles.