Bullying
abuse; attack; bully; crime; depression; harassment; hate; health; neglect; speech; stalking; threats; trolling; victimization; child; cyber; dangerous; LGBT youth; gender-targeted, gender-specific; feminist; mental; misogynistic; peer; prevention; speech; virtual; weight-based
The keywords above are from a series of articles cited by a political organization (iamhere) tasked with international control of information.
If we were to be generous to the claimant and pretend that the bully could be governed out of existence, we might ask what would be taken from the rest of society in order to accomplish such a feat. How closely must we be monitored so that the bully can be identified, and how powerful must our policeman be that the act of bullying can be thwarted? We also might wonder if it would be beneficial to individuals to insulate them from conflict by solving the problem of the bully.
Simply because we dislike bullying does not mean that we ought to all be coerced in order to stop it. That sort of “reasoning” would never end and its logical conclusion – complete and utter social conformity to some universal norm – is impossible.
What caliber of person is created when he is incentivized to report bad behavior to an authority rather than confront it himself? We might also wonder if the way in which the bully is identified could become arbitrarily defined by the current ruling regime to suit their own interests. After all, the 'public interest' standard of the radio and broadcast era and current censorship techniques of today were and are used for that very purpose.
We would be exchanging conflict-among-peers with peers-that-have-the-ability-to-summon-coercive-powers-against-others.
The argument of iamhere and their favored psychologists is that a special scenario (bullying, hate speech, or some other problem) exists that calls for a special collective effort to solve it. In every scenario, the special collective effort is government. It is assumed that government is the solution to these issues, which by its very monopolist nature excludes all other possible solutions (the markets). The challenge of the statist is then to demonstrate why government is the solution rather than the free market or natural social dynamics.
Iamhere’s selected psychologists answer that with interpretative phenomenological analysis. More government cyber policing in the form of even more surveillance, censorship, high-tech indoctrination software, and language distortion are being argued by practitioners of this technique. Various information control measures which already exist unofficially, are justified so that they can become official agency in the cause of "combating bullying".
What is Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis?
In IPA, a group of victims (defined by the IPA official) are sorted out so that a psychologist can interpret the source and/or solution to the ailment that defines the victim. Methodologically, there is nothing more to add to this description of IPA. A group is assembled that share a similar ailment defined by a psychologist. Then, a psychologist interprets a solution. Both the ailment and the solution are prescribed.
IPA uses "interpretation" where no single finding is universal, even within similar cases, meaning that this technique does not acquire new precedents. The IPA practitioner is not a statistician as he discards hypothesis testing, upon which a statistician would normally rely. The practitioner also uses small data sets, disallowing proper error analysis which might disprove his claims.
So the IPA practitioner is not a scientist. He rejects a consistent and clearly defined methodology from which to discover phenomena, preferring instead an approach that is arbitrarily defined by his own whims as an authoritative figure.
Such is iamhere’s solution to the (real or imagined) problem of bullying online.
Buerger, Cathy. "The Anti-Hate Brigade: How a Group of Thousands Responds Collectively to Online Vitriol." Dangerous Speech Project.
"Task Force on CyberSkills Membership List." Department of Homeland Security.