PERCEPTION OF CYBER VIOLENCE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF STUDENTS AND TEACHERS

The perception of cyber violence has been studied either from the perspective of students or from the perspective of teachers. The contexts that determined these two lines of research were significantly different - the students' perspective was considered to identify the key parts of the definition of this kind of violence, or the perspective of children and young people with different status of involvement in cyber violence was followed. The teachers' perspective was considered in the context of their awareness and assessment of the need for additional education. This paper aims to compare the perceptions of teachers and students, and to compare the perceptions of students with different involvement in online violence. The teachers and students were assessing the severity of certain violent behaviors across the Internet. The survey involved 1,133 elementary and high school students (50,6 % female) and 334 teachers (80,9 % female). It was shown that teachers evaluate all of perceived behaviors as more severe than their students. Groups with different involvement in violence differ on 12 out of the 23 behaviors in such a way that they find the uninvolved group perceives the behavior as more severe than the perpetrators and/or perpetrators/cyber victim. 21 out of the 23 behaviors were rated as more severe by female than by male students. Interaction indicates that male perpetrators assess logging into someone else's profiles as less severe compared to the other seven groups of participants, and that both male perpetrators and male perpetrators/cyber victim groups underestimate the severity of making anonymous hurtful comments relative to the remaining six student groups.