Abstract:
This project conceptualises the phenomenon of cyberbullying in line with a second-order framework whereby bullying is recognised as a group process embedded within numerous hegemonic sociocultural discourses and social hierarchies. Through a theoretical framework informed by Giroux's public pedagogy and Butler's performative gender, this project seeks to understand in what ways may the phenomenon of cyberbullying perform, police, and perpetuate norms and power dynamics related to rural adolescent masculinity. Situated within New Zealand's sociohistorical context, this project also considers how these norms and power dynamics may reproduce inequalities apparent in wider society. Finally, this project explores how cultural information may come to be contextualised and adopted by New Zealand adolescents through this phenomenon, and how this may influence the acceptance or rejection of identities in the social worlds of youth. The findings are based on the perceptions and experiences of two rural adolescent males explored through in-depth interviews. The results locate cyberbullying production as emerging from a normative masculine performative and policing action. Local public pedagogy is identified as a key informer of masculine discourses that may be 'taken up' and performed through cyberbullying. Rural contexts are identified as potentially more vulnerable to cyberbullying due to a conservative and constrictive culture. As a group phenomenon involving active cultural agents, cyberbullying is found to contextualise and reproduce cultural information and delineate as well as police boundaries of culturally intelligible masculinity. In reproducing wider cultural narratives, sociohistorically based power dynamics apparent in the wider cultural context may be validated and reproduced among adolescent peer groups. The results from this study generate suggestions for future research and intervention related to cyberbullying and masculinity in rural New Zealand.
