Rural school learners’ experiences of social media bullying: a narrative inquiry.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore rural school learners’ experiences of social media bullying which is a worldwide problem presenting a variety of negative experiences to learners, including those in rural areas. Therefore, this requires rural school learners to be proactive, cautious, and vigilant to combat bullying on social media platforms may affect their physical, emotional, and psychological wellbeing. Since the experiences of rural school learners concerning bullying on social media platforms remains under-researched, this narrative inquiry contributes to bridging this gap by dissecting the narratives of rural learners to emerge with incisive insight and strategies to mitigate social media bullying. Bronfenbrenner ecological theoretical framework underpinned this study which adopted a qualitative interpretivist paradigm which was found suitable for exploring rural school learners’ experiences of social media bullying and its effects. This qualitative narrative inquiry research design elicited data by conducting narrative interviews involving five rural school learners from the same school who were purposefully sampled. Thematic analysis was then applied to dissect the collected data. Six themes emerged from this analysis. The findings suggested that Facebook and WhatsApp platforms were mainly utilised by rural school learners to bully each other because of jealousy, boredom, and lack of knowledge which impaired victims physically, emotionally, and psychologically. Recommendations emanating from the findings were aligned to the training of learners on how to deal social media bullying, how to prevent being vulnerable to social media bullying, and learners can educate and assist one another to annihilate this scourge. Also, school officials should invite and collaborate with parents and teachers, the Department of Education that can appoint psychologists, psychiatrists, or counsellors, and the school community in the vicinity of the rural school, in addition to structuring school and national education policies that address social media bullying.