Analysis of Tweets Related to Cyberbullying

Abstract

The use of Twitter, especially by teenagers and young people, has raised the issue of cyberbullying. There is a lack of research into what types of advice and support are available in tweets for cyberbullying victims, and into the features influencing the spread of tweets related to cyberbullying. In this study, 7,315 tweets associated with cyberbullying were extracted and analysed. The results highlighted that tweets containing features such as a higher number of URLs, hashtags, or followers did not necessarily lead to a higher number of retweets. Sentiment analysis of the tweets presented both positive and negative sentiments from users towards cyberbullying. This study manually sampled 400 tweets for content analysis. Tweets covered a variety of areas associated with cyberbullying ranging from user opinions to news events. Results showed that 33% of tweets contained advice and support for cyberbullying victims. These tweets produced the highest number of retweets in comparison with tweets covering other areas associated with cyberbullying.