Abstract:
This thesis seeks to explore and understand what cyberstalking is and how best to respond to it. The overall research goal is to explore perceptions of cyberstalking in the New Zealand context. The first aim of this thesis is to explore how New Zealanders perceive the concept and definition of cyberstalking. The second aim of this thesis is to explore New Zealanders’ perceptions of who should be responsible for addressing cyberstalking. To address these aims, an online anonymous survey was conducted. This comprised 13 closed-ended questions and 6 open-ended questions. One hundred and eight responses were received from the online anonymous survey. The survey responses were analysed using the descriptive statistics, cross-tabulations and thematic analysis. While some of the results align with the existing literature on cyberstalking, other parts of the results revealed new insights. This thesis first found that cyberstalking exists along a spectrum of understandings. This spectrum begins with non-serious, casual ‘Facebook stalking’ that stems from curiosity and boredom. The spectrum ends with very serious cyberstalking that has crossed over, or has the potential to cross over, into offline terrestrial harm. Secondly, it found that there was a wide range of perceptions on who should be responsible for responding to the issue of cyberstalking. There was indication of a potential victim-blaming rhetoric through the common theme of individual responsibility. Confusion over who should be responsible was also a common theme that was discovered. Lastly, results found in this thesis demonstrate that there can be various ways to respond to cyberstalking that include appropriate policy and legislation, methods of practice, and criminological understandings. Overall, this thesis adds to the existing international literature by providing insights into the issues of defining and responding to cyberstalking.