Exploring Online Peer Harassment Experiences of Female University Students: A Qualitative Study

In the recent decade, there has been an increase in the use of the internet in Pakistan, and increasingly more female students are using it to communicate with others. However, female students are also facing disproportional harassment via the internet. This study aimed to explore female university students' experiences related to online harassment victimization, bystander behavior, and perpetration. This study was conducted in a private university in Pakistan, and a basic qualitative study research design was used. Semi-structured-interviews were conducted with 14 graduate and postgraduate students to gather the meaning these participants gave or extracted from the online peer harassment experiences. Data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. All data related to fourteen participants were coded. Clustering similar codes helped in identifying sub-categories from data. Several assertions were developed by comparing and contrasting various categories and sub-categories. Analysis of the data revealed that all the participants had been victims of online harassment. Moreover, all participants had witnessed online harassment as a bystander. However, they did not interfere considering it others' matters, especially when the person causing the problem was unknown to them for fear of harassment. Interestingly, some of them had also been a perpetrator of online harassment. This study has helped in developing an understanding of the prevalence of cyber-bullying and online harassment among female university students using a small sample. The knowledge produced can help us in developing a digital citizenship curriculum, which is a tool to prepare students for using the technology in a positive and informative way so that female university students' online experiences can be made better.