How often are Polish teachers attacked online?

Abstract

Cyberbullying and cyberaggression are phenomena that have been analysed for more than two decades. However, there is an empirical gap in the literature to characterise the scale of the phenomenon in certain countries and professional groups (e.g. teachers). In order to fill this gap, 733 teachers from Poland responded to questions identifying the scale and mechanisms of Internet attacks resulting from their profession. Based on the data collected, it was noted that (1) each type of information and communications technology (ICT)-mediated attack on teachers is characterised by varying frequency of occurrence; (2) at least once in their careers, 17.5% of teachers have experienced a situation of dissemination of negative comments about them, 10.8% have received negative digital messages intended to trigger negative emotions, and 8.3% have faced hacking (taking over) of a private online account; (3) systematic attacks (at least once a month) on teachers comprise a group of no more than 1% of respondents; (4) there is an apparent correlation between both the lack of experience of cyberattacks by profession and the co-occurrence of different forms of cyber aggression and cyberbullying; (5) based on a cluster analysis using the k-means method, two groups of teachers were identified, where the first (91%) was characterised by a lack of experience of cyberbullying, while the second (9%) rarely or very rarely experienced an attack due to their profession; and (6) teachers teaching in a vocational school, working in a medium or large city, or being male results in a slightly higher exposure to cyberbullying attacks.