Bullying as a novel event

The term “bullying” makes visible a hitherto unheard-of form of violence among peers that is clearly increasing in the country, as the following mentions show.

The phenomenon of bullying, the new violence among kids (El Día, 30 January 2008).

“Bullying” is, according to these data, a phenomenon on the rise, since a decade ago the number of victims of aggression did not exceed one or two of every ten (El Día, 6 October 2004).

This modality of violence is presented in a spectacular way and associated to an emotional discourse. These modes of communication are frequent to make social facts visible (^{Saez, 2020}). In the case of bullying, it is presented as follows:

FEAR IN THE CLASSROOMS (El Día, 24 November 2011).

The room of panic (El Día, 5 March 2009).

A product of the society in which we live, school violence has become one of the many nightmares with which inhabitants of big cities must deal in an almost daily basis. Fights between classmates, insults and even harassment between peers - “bullying”, they call it - surprise us (Hoy, 22 May 2009).

Psychopathologization of school life

Bullying as a perspective that circulates in the media discourse has symbolic effects on the representation of the actors who inhabit the educational space. The ways to designate this form of violence between peers refer to the area of health and highlight it as a social disease, an epidemic that is difficult to cure and whose symptoms may be psychopathologically identified in students, as in these notes:

Harassment at school: more frequent at the beginning of secondary school. It is a more common scourge among male students (El Día, 5 April 2011).

A SILENT EPIDEMIC (Hoy, 10 May 2009).

THE SYMPTOMS. Which symptoms should be paid attention to in order to prevent this kind of harassment? According to Vázquez insomnia, sudden mood changes, unmotivated crying, sadness, depression or lower grades are some of the warning signs we should pay attention to (El Día, 5 April 2011).

The appearance of bullying in the press took place through the authorized discourse of science. This has a connection to our interpretive hypothesis about the inflation and the commercial vein of the term. In the corpus of notes analyzed, a mention of outside sources of legitimation of the information appears recurrently. A number of studies and agencies, such as the Program for International Evaluation of Students (PISA) (El Día, 10 June 2011), a citation from UAM professionals (El Día, 2 November 2011), a study of the United Nations’ Organization for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO) (El Día, 2 November 2011), and research work published by UNICEF. It is important to highlight this aspect because, as ^{Bourdieu (2006)} points out, it is part of the strategies in the struggle for the monopoly of scientific authority; i.e., the technical capability and social power to speak and act legitimately. These sources operate by legitimizing the narrative that there is more violence in classrooms and that it is necessary to change this situation.

A concern arises about which practices are being taken for granted by legitimizing discursive practices when using international studies and agencies as sources of information. The construction of violence in the school space through reports and studies of external agencies suggests considering how, from an international perspective, certain fields of action are being proposed, and how the order of things and the field of the possible are structured in the experiences of violence in the school space. We must underscore the need to be careful and have a great deal of caution when an approach and a terminology are translated mechanically into our contexts. In this act of giving voice to studies that originated in other places and dismissing or not presenting those conducted nationally and the voices of professionals from the schools, a view on violence that is comparable to other societies is being produced because Argentinian society is being discussed in the same way as other societies. On the other hand, external studies are tacitly being authorized more than national ones. In this respect, it is necessary to recover the individual-society relationship that these discursive practices manifest and take for granted. These narratives seem to assume a homologation of the social configurations (^{Elias, 1999}) in which individuals live, since the analyses of violence in the school can be translatable.

The experts quoted are only physicians or psychologists: a pediatrician (El Día, 3 July 2011), physician specialized in child psychiatry (El Día, 3 July 2011), a psychologist specialized in adolescence and the family (El Día, 2 November 2011), Equipo Bullying Cero Argentina (El Día, 24 de noviembre de 2011), a psychologist specialized in childhood and adolescence behavioral disorders (El Día, 9 May 2011), and an expert in school violence (El Día, 24 November 2011) whose profession is not specified. This corresponds with the disciplines that lead the research on bullying we saw above, basically psychology and medicine interlinked in the area of mental health.

Thus, we wonder what the effects are of the journalists appeal to scientific discourse to underpin their positions in the media discourse on bullying.

The “neutral” utilization of studies, without a theoretical critique of preconceived “data” or without linking them to the construction of the object of knowledge, has given rise to inquiries into this phenomenon that only systematize common sense. Thus, the discursive practices of the La Plata press present scientific voices as authorized discourses to describe and prescribe bullying.

The media view on how bullying operates

The media discourses describe a “methodology” of how this phenomenon takes place. Coinciding with the studies described above, the coverage typifies the facts as repetitive behavior that involves intimidation, tyrannical attitudes, isolation, threats, insults to a victim or victims already marked as such. This is how they do it:

“Bullying” begins to manifest subtly, through jokes and hazing, becoming increasingly more cruel (mocking, kicks, shoves). Once the aggressor controls the victim, he/she also controls the group (El Día, 6 October 2004).

Unlike occasional conflict, aggression within harassment at school is accompanied by the expectation that this kind of attack is likely to be repeated (El Día, 5 April 2011).

This way to describe the phenomenon alludes to a dynamic with fixed roles: victim or harassed, aggressor or harasser, spectators and followers, where most of them are male. This aspect coincides with research on the subject. Some evidence:

There is a critical moment in harassment at school: the first years of secondary school. This is what specialists point out, adding that it is a scourge whose protagonists are most often - both as victims and as aggressors - male students, and that it affects the whole courses, since the situations associated to this problem leave traces both on their protagonists and in those who witnessed them (El Día, 5 April 2011). While yesterday people still spoke of the case of the girls who had a fight on Facebook and one of them ended up being stabbed, several specialists consulted by this paper admitted that violence among younger students is a growing problem that often places adolescents as either victims or aggressors (El Día, 24 November 2011).

The following infographic make this view more visible:

Source: El Día, 24-11-2011.

Infographic 1 The circle of bullying 

The harassed or “bullied” one: if he cannot defend himself physically or verbally, he will keep on being harassed until someone else takes his place or until an adult can intervene.

The harasser or “bully”: the one who plans the harassment, not necessarily the one who carries it out. He decides the rules. He is the group leader (little capo, top dog, the “popular” one) and needs to show strength and power.

The school staff: the teachers, the coaches, the principal, the bus driver. They are the ones who must detect the bullying and intervene immediately.

The spectators, who may adopt different attitudes. There are those who look on silently (the silent majority), those who laugh at what is happening, and those who try to stop the harassment by either intervening directly or reporting it.

The parents, who are responsible for detecting changes in their children and discussing it with the school authorities.

The followers, who follow the leader. They support the harassment, and often carry it out and celebrate it. Without them, the bullying would mean nothing to the leader (to be popular, there have to be others who idolize him).

In their characterization they mention the aggressor’s motivations - “needs to show strength and power” - (El Día, 24 November 2011; El Día, 10 September 2010) and the sequels for the victim in harassment situations.

As we mentioned above, this is a terminology that has not been constructed in the field of education or pedagogy but that originated in other fields and finds it difficult to respond to problems within the school environment. This approach to bullying tries to construct a typology of victims (students who are insecure and helpless, among other characteristics) and aggressors (controlling, group leaders, little capos, top dogs, the “popular” ones, who need to show strength and power, etc.) by reinforcing the binary coupling of victim and aggressor. These supposedly intrinsic qualities of a boy or girl act as predictors of the individual’s behavior in the social world.

Students and how bullying operates

The media view establishes a clear association of bullying with the availability of technology for young people often described as an “addiction to videogames” (El Día, 5 March 2009). As other notes say:

While fights in school do not cease, Internet sites that promote disputes among adolescents multiply (El Día, 24 November 2011).

For years now, television culture has shown instances of mocking the other, underscoring his/her vulnerability. Somehow what we have seen with [Marcelo] Tinelli and others has enabled this mockery within the school environment (El Día, 10 May 2009).

Thus, thus phenomenon made visible as “bullying” mutated into that of “cyberbullying” or “online harassment” with the expansion of these practices into the social networks, where the symbolic boundary of inside and outside the school became more blurred: “Classrooms and social networks, two environments of youth aggression” (El Día, 24 November 2011).

According to the experts quoted by the press, the new forms of communication offered by the Internet make a violence that already existed in private environments visible.

CYBERBULLYING. According to specialists, bullying takes place when there are no adults around, repeatedly, and usually in school, although with the expansion of new technologies such as the Internet or mobile telephones it also continues outside the educational environment. “Before, the child arrived home and felt safe, since the victim believes that no one can help him/her. But now the harassment continues through the Internet, the chat, social networks, and text messages. What they call cyberbullying, is nothing but the same bullying”, observed Kelly (El Día, 5 April 2011).

Besides creating groups in social networks with the intention of attacking others, another frequent method is to log in to private websites to write insults or mockery under pseudonyms. Some initiatives include creating Fotologs of others with the same aim. It is easy to find in YouTube many videos of fights in classrooms, schoolyards, or in the street (El Día, 24 November 2011).

What the specialist says about school violence is also part of the violent universe that day by day affects our society. According to a number of studies, young people’s use of the Internet and technology has been distorted lately by the bad tools of mobile phones, social networks or online video platforms, which have led to the creation of a new way to scare and terrorize, turning thousands of young people every day into harassed people through new technologies. Several studies conducted worldwide reveal that more than one third of young people have experienced or been the victim of cyberbullying (Hoy, 24 October 2010).

Against crime and harassment today for a safer Internet. In five continents, today is International Day for a Safe Internet. The event warns and prevents against “cyberbullying” or harassment through the computers that kids use in schools, and repudiates racist and child pornography contents in the web (Diagonales, 6 February 2009).

The consequences mentioned are many and range from the emotional and physical to the fatal. It is highlighted that victims may have hallucinations, and victims are described as weak, psychotic, with “self-lockdown disorders”, and “addiction to videogames”. They claim that they may have a psychotic outbreak or kill their classmates.

Addiction to videogames has caused concern worldwide. […] Their kids have suffered harassment at school - bullying - throughout elementary school, they see them as too weak to cope with the world, and they overprotect them”. They do not impose boundaries because they fear how they may react. “You hear the news and there comes a moment when you don’t know what to do,” Juan’s father confesses. “We were afraid that if we took away the computer or the television he would turn to drugs. I spoke to my wife and we opted for what we believed was the lesser evil”. Rotenberg adds: “There is always someone in the family who is complicit, who brings food and looks after him/her. The kids end up being little (or big) tyrants in their home, but when they are made to go out they may decompensate, have a psychotic outbreak, and if forced, even kill someone” (El Día, 5 March 2009).

“I have a case of a woman who adopted her child as a baby. She felt that he belonged to her and transmitted her distrust of the world to him,” says Rotenberg. “That kid dropped out of school, does not leave his room, and says that if he is forced to go to school he will kill all his classmates. I am working with his mother and grandmother, and we have managed to get him to study with private teachers at home” (El Día, 5 March 2009).

“Kids with self-lockdown disorder feel a great deal of distrust of the world, they feel that anyone may hurt them.” […] “In another case I went to a home and had to deal with a kid who threatened his mother with a knife so she wouldn’t let me in. The key is to be constant: when they see that you don’t go away, they let you into their life and into their family” (El Día, 5 March 2009).

This kind of violence has mostly emotional consequences (51% of the cases), but also physical ones (13%). Minors who have suffered cyberbullying also start getting lower grades (13%), isolate socially (6%) and skip classes because they are scared (3%) (Hoy, 22 May 2009).

That is what experts say about this problem, which was also at the center of the news due to the case of a 12 year old boy from Temperley who killed himself with a shot to his head. Some of his family’s testimony pointed towards the school, claiming that the boy (Víctor Felette) had been harassed at school by some of his classmates in the Physical Education class that he did not want to attend anymore. There are however more complex aspects in this case which are being investigated, and the role played in it by the alleged school harassment is not entirely clear (El Día, 5 April 2011).

STRESS AND DEPRESSION. “One of the most common clinical profiles that originate in bullying is depression”, explained pediatrician Flavia Sinigagliesi, member of the Center for Research into Psycho-Neurological Development (CIDEP) (Hoy, 22 May 2009).

What is also interesting here is how the press presents extreme cases that led to death.

Solutions proposed to situations of bullying

Along with this typology of the qualities of the harassers’ character, the solutions proposed by the media discourse prioritize moving the “victim” to a different school. Following the prevailing individualizing view, no proposals that include working with the educational community are made. These are some examples.

In my first years of secondary school I suffered the constant aggressions of a group of classmates with whom I sometimes tried to get along but from whom I never got any other response than harassment. At first I thought that that nightmare could be reverted with the passage of time, but it grew worse every time and I had to change schools (El Día, 10 May 2009).

THE CHANGE OF SCHOOL. “If the school does not become aware of the risks of school violence, and no progress can be made in that direction, then the solution is to change the kid who is being harassed by his/her classmates to another school and give him/her psychological assistance”, explained professor Mariana Kelly, from the Team Zero Bullying (El Día, 10 September 2010).

“The case of Matías - a kid who, after being harassed by his classmates throughout elementary school, managed to ask for help and change to another school - moved the participants in the workshop (El Día, 10 September 2010).

Likewise, this form of violence in the media discourse connotes a criminological bias. School harassment is defined as criminal behavior:

Governments, companies and institutions from over 150 countries hold today the International Day for a Safe Internet to warn against ‘cyberbullying’ or school harassment on the web, and also to sensitize parents, educators and minors about the existence of risks in the web, as well as to promote a responsible and safe use of the new technologies and avoid criminal behavior such as school harassment (Diagonales, 2009).

It is important to stop and analyze these prejudiced and criminalizing claims. Bullying is a category that under this discursive operation associates young people, harassment, and crime, leading to a judicial treatment of social and educational life.

In the discourse of the press of La Plata, bullying is described with an “apparent ideological and political neutrality of the naturalized category of bullying through which the social issue is essentialized” (^{Kaplan, 2014: 2}). It is presented as an individualizing phenomenon without placing the discussion on the relational, on the historical dimensions and the contexts on which biographies are anchored and find their explanation and meanings. Following Carina Kaplan, we may argue that there is a line of historic continuity between the central thesis of biological determinism (or biologicist racism) and bullying. Broadly speaking, both approaches coincide in claiming that we are born violent or not violent, with or without a tendency for social coexistence.

The case of “Los Bullying”

It is no coincidence that a student introduced himself as “a bullying” and that he was part of a group that called themselves “Los Bullying”. That name emerged when the school’s former principal, in one of the many times they were called to her office, told one of them that he “had early signs of bullying”. He told us how it happened:

L: The principal told me right away that I had to change to the afternoon classes because she was afraid that I had early signs of Bullying. […] And I tried to take it easy, like saying “O.K., that’s what she thinks,” I know I’m not like that. I tried to take it like something funny. It’s not funny, what she told me, ha, but I tried to take it more lightly, as if it was a joke. And that’s when we began to call what we do, we began to call ourselves “Bullying”. They began to call me Bullying… they said “eh, Bullying, Bullying, Bullying”. And then all of us, all the group began to call ourselves “Bullying”.

P: Not just you but the group…

L: Now we are “Los Bullying” [laughs].

(Luciano, 5th year, School 1 - Avellaneda).

When the former principal imputes Luciano “early signs of bullying”, she assigns to him a discrediting attribute (stigma) based on personal traits (^{Goffman, 2006}). She “diagnoses” him, in medical parlance, as a young man with psychopathological problems, justifying his behavior without placing him within a broader social context of interrelationships in which it takes place. Thus, the responsibility falls upon the student, without reflecting on the school’s institutional dynamics and the role of the teachers and authorities. Although Luciano accepted gracefully the label placed on him by the school’s authority, he incorporated the notion of bullying as a disease.

Although the students in this group take the term jokingly and try to turn it into a group emblem, they also show some concern at being pigeonholed within the school as what they consider “true bullying”:

P: Let’s go back to the topic of bullying… Do you know what it means? Some of them: Yes.

H: A person who abuses others and does not care about the other person, who insults without trying to hurt people.

N: A constant aggression towards another producing psychological damage or other consequences. It’s that, the damage to others. Like burning someone’s head.

G: It may not be only physical but also verbal. They tell us that it’s more verbal, we don’t beat anybody. That’s what they tell us.

P: Ok, they tell you this that you’re telling me?

S: Tell told him that [nodding towards Luciano].

G: No, and some days ago they also told us that.

N: Because they threw a paper ball at the teacher’s head.

S: They threw, well …

P: Who threw it?

L and H: Him [pointing to Sergio]

S: No, but then they threatened us.

H: Because we told him … the prank was to throw a little paper ball like this [hand gesture to show something small]. I made a paper ball and the prank was to throw it at her [imitates throwing it]. No, he went PUM! [gestures a hard throw and the paper ball hitting the teacher’s head. They all laugh]. It made her head spin, it killed her. Left a bump like this on her head.

N: Every time he does something like that we tell him not to do it because then they say that we are really bullying because … [they all speak at the same time, it’s not clear what they say]. (Focus Group 5th year, School 1 - Avellaneda).

Both the label imposed by the former principal and the punishment they got, such as reprimands or the prohibition to leave the classroom during recess, reduced the problem to a dichotomy victim/aggressor, innocent/guilty, healthy/unhealthy that does not permit addressing it in its complexity, but rather contributes to reinforcing and fixing the students’ “profiles” and roles.

In this framework, it would help to recall ^{Bourdieu’s contribution (2012}, ²⁰¹⁴⁾ to the study of school and social taxonomies, which as symbolic acts of classification are instruments for practical knowledge that help structure our perception of the social world and the meaning of our actions. Naming what students are or do is a productive act that has a truth effect on their subjectivation experiences. They run through them in the construction of their identity and self-esteem, and may have an impact on their school and social trajectory (^{Kaplan, 2008}a).

Imposing a name implies assigning someone a social essence through which an identity is institutionalized. Thus, “the act of institution is an act of communication, but of a very specific type: it notifies someone of his identity, in the dual sense of expressing it and imposing it by expressing it before the others, […] thus notifying him with authority what he is and what he has to be (^{Bourdieu, 2014: 103}).

It is a power that, by enunciating, also contributes performatively to construct the world named.