Cyberbullying From a Research Viewpoint

In less than two decades, social media has become a part of life for many people, increasing the positive and negative effects of social relationships. In a sense, the traditional offline behaviors moved into a ubiquitous environment, enhancing the social phenomenon of cyberbullying. Thus, it attracted much attention from different fields within academia. To understand how research has been conducted in the last 20 years and the topics addressed, this study applied a bibliometric analysis to academic literature from 2000 to 2020 related to cyberbullying in social media, using techniques such as citation analysis, co-citation analysis, and content analysis. The growing interest of the field is confirmed, and some research gaps are unveiled. Since this is one of the first studies to explore cyberbullying that occurs in social media networks, it is hoped that this chapter will stimulate further research on this topic reinforcing the gaps found.