(PDF) An Introduction in Cyberbullying Research

National Economics University
Faculty of International Education
IBD program
-----0O0-----
Project
Cyber Bullying in IBD
students
Name: Group 1
Nguyễn Phú An Nguyễn Linh Chi
Nguyễn Thị Vân Anh Nguyễn Thái Tuấn
Class: I15A6
Instructor: Ms. Lê Thu Hà, M.A
March, 2020
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Table of Contents
Table of figures..................................................................................................................2
Part I: Introduction.............................................................................................................4
Background information:...........................................................................................................4
Rationale:....................................................................................................................................6
Scope of the study:......................................................................................................................7
Research questions:.....................................................................................................................7
Methodology:..............................................................................................................................7
Overview of the outline:..............................................................................................................8
Part II: Major findings........................................................................................................9
1. Real situation about cyber bullying among IBD students..................................................9
2. The main causes of cyber bullying at IBD:.......................................................................12
3. The negatives of effects of cyberbullying:........................................................................15
3.1 Having a bad mentality...........................................................................................................................15
3.2 Difficulty in social communication........................................................................................................16
3.3 Bad effects on their study.......................................................................................................................16
4. Solutions how to minimaize this problem.........................................................................18
Part III: Conclusion and recommendation.........................................................................20
Part V: Appendix and Reference.......................................................................................21
Appendix....................................................................................................................................21
References..................................................................................................................................23
Table of figures
Figure 1 Percentages of Ibd students have been bullied on the Internet..................................10
Figure 2 IBD students’ responses to the notice of ways the bullies bully them......................10
Figure 3 Percentages of IBD students’ point of view about the cause of................................12
Figure 4 IBD students’ responses to know about the bullies is...............................................13
Figure 5 Different repercussions of cyberbullying..................................................................14
Figure 6 Percentages of IBD students’ choices of various solutions.......................................16
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Acknowledgement
First of all, we want to express my appreciation to my teacher, Ms. Le
Thi Thu Ha, who has given us a great deal of helpful advices and instructions
and examples for our lessions, without her valuable support, this essay cannot
be able to accomplish.
Last but not least, we want to express appropriate thanks to my IBD
friends of NEU (Intake 15) who have supported us to do survey questions. They
spent their time for filling in our questionnaires and advices us to collect the
data for our lecture.
Lastly, we want to forward the best wishes for your support and we will
grateful for it.
Group 1
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Part I: Introduction
Background information:
In era of industry 4.0, with the rapid growth of social networks. Every day, more than billion
people connect with each other using social media which completely changed the way people
communicate. Before people could not imagine the ability to speak to a person in another
country sitting at home, can now see a person and communicate with them as if they were
speaking directly. Today, chidren are being raised in society owned by Internet where social
media is the main tool that helps people interact with each other. There are currently 62
million social network users in Vietnam, including over 6 million Facebook and Instagram
users under the age of 18 (Vietnam youths struggle with cyberbullying - Vietnam Insider,
2019). While a great of today’s young people use online network as a good space to divide
their knowledge, image.. However, the invisible anonymity on the Internet makes people feel
emotionless and malicious. In addition, with the expansion and connection throughout the
world, it gives people the freedom to express themselves without the limits of prejudice.
On the other hand, because there is no limit on the internet, we are facing a new
way of bullying that is cyber bullying. A great of people who are mostly teenagers are being
bullied. Despite with a series of depressive scandals just because of online comment (such as
“you are so ugly” or “why you still alive”), people are still criticizing and arresting others.
This will lead to unpredictable results especially teenagers. Some youngers will become
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school-obessed, afraid to communicate, others feel being isolated and inferiority in
themselves even become depression.
Not until those recent scandals did people start to worry about this issue. Whether
cyberbullying affects people and is it only celebrities who get? Hopefully, through this topic,
people can find out the consequences of cyber bullying as well as suggest some possible
solutions to deal with them
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Rationale:
The group proceed this study because we remarked that the youth had a great deal of
problems with their network usage and don’t know how to balance it appropriately. To the
youth who have just logged on the social network more actively, they constantly need to face
up with many tough issues such as fake news, bodyshamming or stress. Hence, cyberbullying
takes place among many IBD students in particular and in general among young people. As
the quantity and popularity of social networking continues to soar, so do the opportunities for
the misuse of technology. Because of this, cyberbullying is a phenomenon that is drastically
increasing in prevalence. This issue has led to many negative impacts. Especially, this
actuality causes pressure in student and also creates poor academic performance in students
even the long-term psychological effects lead to depression and suicide.
We have specified to research about “cyberbullying” with an aspiration to change the minds
of students in IBD, assist them understand more about this serious problem. This research
will not only give many students in IBD some remedy to grasp their emotions, but also help
us make out a great of knowledges.
In this study, we will investigate the cyberbullying trend of IBD students. By and large, it
attempts to:
 The real situation about cyberbullying among IBD students
 Reasons
 Effects
 Some solutions to diminish this problem
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Scope of the study:
In this investigation, if the scope of the survey was be discussed a large number of IBD
students, obviously it is impossible to oversight with all answers. Hence, it focuses on
researching a small part of them. So this study is limited and only mention IBD students of
intake 15 at NEU.
Research questions:
With the objectives proposed in the first section, this essay raises 4 research questions:
*What is the real situation about cyber bullying among IBD students?
*What are the causes for cyber bullies?
*How does cyberbullying affect students?
*What are solutions to the problem?
Methodology:
To collect data, there are two main sources that I used:
For the primary data, 85 questionnaires including 6 survey questions were distributed to
85 IBD students. After that, the data were aggregated, analyzed and counted with deatail
charts.
For secondary data: The detail in this subject was searched on books, articles, and
websites,etc.
In summary, the entire study included 85 questions including 6 survey questions on the
the cyberbullying situation of IBD students and some information of cyber bullying situation
from Internet
Overview of the outline:
* What is the real situation about cyberbullying among IBD students?
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- Evaluation of IBD students’s bullied
- The way of cyberbullying
*What are the causes for cyber bullies?
- Relating to emotion
- Anonymity
- Trend
-Low self-esteem issues
* How does cyber bullying affect students?
-Having bad mentality
- Difficulty in social communication
- Bad effects on their study
* What are solutions of the problem?
- myself’ responsibility
- governments’ responsibility
- individuals’ responsibility
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Part II: Major findings
1. Real situation about cyber bullying among IBD students
Bullying in schools is nothing new today. This situation is increasingly complex and is
becoming a top concern in education not only in number of cases but also in severity.
According to data from Plan International and ICRW (2015) survey in 5 countries including
Vietnam shows that 7 out of every 10 students suffer from school violence.
However, the day when classrooms are connected to the outside world means that school
hours do not end when students leave the classroom and unfortunately bullying does not stop
there. They continue bullying in digital devices like cell phones, computers, and tablets which
call cyberbullying. This issue seems to become a common circumstance for today’s youth,
IBD students of NEU are of no exception.
Figure 1 Percentages of IBD students have been bullied on the Internet.
52%
48%
Have you ever been bullied on the internet?
Yes
No
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As illustrated in “Chart 1.1”, cyberbullying is common issue among IBD students. The
number of IBD students who are being bullied in the internet accounted for more than half of
the survey participants (52%). On the other hand, up to 48% of students are also never being
victim of cyberbullying. These students might be vague about cyberbullying and may not
even know they are being bullied. Some students said that “they just think those comment is
just joking.” In comparison with only 41 people out of 85 respondents said they were not
victims of cyberbullying, but 80 respondents answered the question “How did they bully
you”. As can be concluded that even though they do not realize that they are being bullied,
there are problems that happen to them and it is clear that more IBD students must have
bullied increasingly.
Posting comments or rumors about you online that are mean, hurtful, or
embarrassing.
Posting a mean or hurtful your picture or video.
Posting mean or hateful names, comments, or content about any race,
religion, ethnicity or other your personal characteristics online.
Doxing, an abbreviated form of the word documents, is a form of online
harassment used to exact revenge and to threaten and destroy the
privacy of individuals by making your personal information public,
including addresses, social security, credit card and
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
54%
17%
19%
8%
23%
4%
7%
How did they bully?
Figure 2 IBD students’ responses to the notice of ways the bullies bully them.
As shown in the table, the number of students supporting the idea of “E: posting
comments” accounted for the highest number, at nearly 54%. It is clear that commenting is a
popular method on social media. Whether people familiar or not, they are always judged. Just
because people think that when people posted publicly on social media, they need to be
assessed. A few other ways also involve in posting which is pretty much chosen after posting
comments is “posting hurtful picture” (19%) and “posting hateful your personal
characteristics” (23%). Religious and religion differences are inevitable. Everyone is living in
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a different environment, having different interests, and different in every way, especially
when we live in the Internet world where billions of people use it and is gradually becoming
a disaster. Just need a unique characteristic is that you can be instantly submerged with just a
click.
Another poor technique that the cyberbullying takes is that students will threaten (17%) or
pretend themselves online (8%) in order to hurt and solicit or post personal or false
information about them. Despite only a few students encounter this sitution, it is undeniable
its seriousness. If the incident is seriously prolonged, it can cause serious psychological
effects such as fear or depression. It will be demonstrated more clearly in part 2 “the main
causes of cyberbullying”.
And the final form of bullying for IBD students is doxing (7%) it means that they will
public the privacy of individuals, your personal information... and the last one is creating a
hurtful webpage (4%). These cases happen to people once in the blue moon. Nevertheless,
especially celebrities will occur a lot. For instance, recently airport staff arbitrarily spread the
passport photos of two members of the Korean group or we can see a series of anti-page
created on Facebook even a Vietnamese high school student was fined for this. It clearly saw
many of the consequences to celebrities such as stress, depression even death. (be covered in
part 3 “negative impact”)
In general, the actual being bullied circumstance of IBD students has been increasingly
becoming and it also is a controversial problem. So why has this situation developed
strongly? What is the main reason?
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2. The main causes of cyber bullying at IBD:
When people invented the Internet, even the American technology pioneer- Rheingold
Howard (Linda, H., 1993) has once identified that Internet does not see the shape of age and
origin of each other, he is optimistic that the network will be a land without prejudice.
However, the invisible anonymity on the Internet brings in the feeling of equality, hardly
discrimination and also offers the users even power to do things in their own ways. The
survey gives out an almost 50-50 proportion of both sides which means one out of every two
internet users suffers from cyberbullying. (but it may not reflect the most accurate situation).
To learn better about the situation, a question relating to factors causing cyberbullying
had been made with many potential causes (respondents are able to pick more than one
option for this question).
anger
revenge
jealousy
thirst for difference/famous
anonymity of social networks
trend and movement
differences in characteristic
low seft-esteem
others…
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
28%
32%
55%
27%
22%
35%
27%
25%
7%
Figure 3 Percentages of IBD students’ point of view about the cause of
So, the question is “What do you think are the main reasons for cyber bullying?”
All the options are listed based on the first seven people interviewed about the reasons
of cyberbullying in terms of their perspectives. Apparently, apart from anonymity, low self-
esteem issues and trend, most options are somehow relating to emotion because emotion is
considered to be the primary driver of action, so it often affects people’s behavior the most.
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At the end, Jealousy seems to stand out among all choices with roughly 55% while others
show pretty equal figures. Jealousy is a state of emotion when you feel unsatisfied and
annoyed seeing others excel and perform better than you. The three remaining reasons have a
stronger connect to people’s awareness of society and themselves. While the anonymity
(22%) and trend (35%) provide bullies covers to avoid taking the responsibilities of their
actions, the low self-esteem situation (25%) seems to be a factor that keeps bullying
continuing because bullies may not even realize the issues and problems so as to stop. Self-
esteem is belief and confidence in your own ability and value. “If we see an unacceptable part
of ourselves, we tend to attack others to guard against threats” a psychologist Laura Reedy
said (Abrams, 2017).
In terms of investigating deeper into the causing factors of bullying, a question focusing on
bullies’ behaviors has been added to the questionnaire.
Having aggressive behavior in general
Encouraging the behavior of other bullies (including adults or
fictional characters)
Having obsession with social popularity
Having acquantance with you (like your family, your friends,..)
Not knowing
Others…
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
54%
38%
23%
24%
16%
2%
The Bullies are usually
Figure 4 IBD students’ responses to know about the bullies is.
The result gives out an expected order. Obviously, having aggressive behavior is often
attached to bullies, hence, creating fallacies in people’s minds and affect the results
significantly. As a result, “having aggressive behaviors” ranks first with 52% respondents. It
is neither totally wrong or accurate, but this is cyber bullying therefore it does not necessarily
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involve violence. The second rank belongs to “encouraging behaviors of other bullies”. In
fact, most people would answer based on their previous preferences about cyber bullying, this
kind of bully occurs on the internet which allows a large amount of access, hence when a
person gets assaulted or support, it often comes from many rather just one particular resulting
in the opinion of hordes of bullies encouraging each another taking up 38% of the
respondents. While having acquaintance with victims and having obsession with popularity
occupies 24% and 23% respectively, “not knowing” seems to be the least concern issue
among all specifically addressed ones. However, it should deserve more because this is
directly related to bullies’ awareness and plays vital role in causing cyber bullying. Jokes,
words and images posted or established are sometimes represents cyberbullying with no
awareness and it just keeps happening till something really noticeable is in place. In addition,
the given answers apparently cannot cover all the scenarios but it can be the most
representative ones in terms of surveyed people. And it gives out information about notable
behaviors of bullies contributing to causing cyberbullying.
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3. The negatives of effects of cyberbullying:
Over the years, more and more people suffer from cyberbullying. There are many
journalists interested in this issue and contributes a lot of evidence for cyberbullying.
According to Google trends, cyberbullying keywords searched for have tripled in the past
decade. With just a couple of yearly searches before 2008, this also goes to show that the
cyber bullying rates are also on the rise every year.
Reticence to attend school
Negative mood
Depression
Low self-esteem
Social setbacks
Untrusting of others
Disordered anxiety
Poor grades
Dispirited
Other
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
16%
54%
39%
25%
25%
24%
21%
18%
14%
3%
Figure 5 Different repercussions of cyberbullying
3.1 Having a bad mentality
As is shown by chart 1.3, the number of students supporting the idea of "negative mood"
accounted for the highest number, at nearly 55%. It is normal to feel a little bit sad once in a
while. Undoubtedly for most people, life must be ups and downs, otherwise life would be
quite boring. However, these negative emotions which occur on a regular basis can be
evidence that stress starting to adversely affect people. They can have influence on our
health, productivity and many others things.
Negative mood can be a sign of depression and disordered anxiety. This is the reason for
influential depression also ranks second (39%) and 21% feel disordered anxiety when they
are bullied. Depression can make people feel uncertain, vulnerable, tired in non-stop. Even
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only the daily basis having negative thoughts about yourself, feeling hopelessly out of way.
Even according to WHO, depression is the cause of more than 50% of suicides. In addition,
depression was less than 15% (12 out of 81 students) negative mood, it showed that
depression and disordered anxiety were increasingly expanded in IBD students.
From these results, especially in IBD students, these psychological effects are really
serious problem when we have more than half of students admitted that they were
psychologically affected. Psychological effects are not like things that can show up right
away but they will slowly phobia in the victim’s mind. Because it is hard to recognize that the
only way to treat bad mentality is only possible by psychology. It means that they need to be
understood, sympathetic and shared by their family and friends. Nevertheless, according to
survey in the Internet, for every 10 children, who are victims, only 1 will notify their parents
or adults about this incident.
3.2 Difficulty in social communication
Another terrible result that the negative psychology affects is students will have
difficulty in social communication. Social communication and psychological effects are
closely related. That reason why this supporting idea show pretty equal figures in succession
as “untrusting of others” (24%) and 25% said that they had impact on “social setbacks”.
Some IBD students have some experiences this circumstance when they cannot adapt or
accustom to anyone. As the first point, it is assured that students will have depressed
emotions.
Furthermore, 25% of the students said that the influence of cyberbullying caused low self-
esteem, they feel isolated or can not harmonize with the public. Self-esteem is an essential
thing. This not only gets them to express themselves, but also helps them to get on with their
fellow.
3.3 Bad effects on their study
The final harm of bullying for IBD students is being unable to attend at school (16%)
and also leads to a decline in grades (18%). Non-attendance a lot at school are countless
causes of bad influence on students. It is harmful at the present, but also can affect for their
whole life. Students could miss much important knowledges. Besides, they cannot receive a
good degree if they do not just finish your study process well
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In general, there are a lot of other adverse consequences not only psychologically but
also physical to those who suffer from cyberbullying. It seems to be not only a temporary
influence but also a long-term impact. So what solutions should be implemented to reduce the
cyberbullying situation and to not lead to the consequences?
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4. Solutions how to minimaize this problem
Cyberbullying is a complex problem in modern-day life. Many victims of cyberbullying
don’t know how to solve this problem. About 51 percent of people who responded to the
research questionnaire choose a way that ignores it or keep silent. And that is the worst way.
However, we will give some effective solutions to reduce the amount of Cyberbullying
consequence.
Ignore it
Keep being you
Remind yourself
Block online haters
Be kind and respectful
Acknowledge your feeling
Stick with supporters
Other
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
51%
42%
34%
32%
30%
18%
17%
3%
Figure 6 Percentages of IBD students’ choices of various solutions
4.1 Ignore:
The chart shows us how people respond to cyberbullying. 51% of people choose to ignore
it when teased online. This is also a wise choice Sameer H. and Justin W.P. of the center for
Cyberbullying Research advise victims not to respond to small teasing or to call their names.
Sometimes bullies are encouraged by seeing the victim’s reaction.
4.2 Keep being you:
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This solution has been voted the second most on the chart with 42%. We should calm
down and believe in ourselves. Victims should come up with solutions that feel are suitable,
but we also have to think carefully before proceeding.
4.3 Block online haters and Stick with supporters:
We can say that this is the best way to solve the problem of serious cyberbullying.
Although votes are not high (only 32% and 17%), this is the most effective option. Victims
should do the same 2 things at the same time. Blocking the bully will make it difficult for
them to continue the bad behavior and call for support to ask the bully to stop that behavior.
4.4 Other:
In addition to these measures, the responsibilities belong to the government, the
individual.
*Government’s responsibility: The government should have a group that monitors all
of the social networks like Facebook, Twitter...They will detect cases of CB. Then, members
of the group will ask the bully to stop doing that. If there are serious cases, they will notify
polices and polices can investigate that case. Futhermore the government has to apply
network laws tightly. The punishment must be more strictly. Bullies also will be warned in
the public. That will make people avoid bullying another one.
*Individual’s responsibility: Everybody has to protect yourself from bad people. We
have some advice for them: if you are a victim of CB, you should tell your parents or elder.
Because they have enough experience to solve a big problem. Besides that, we should
propagate about CB for society. That makes people understand the harm of cyberbullying
clearly and more details. After that, people can another one who was bullied and they have
never bullied each other. Propaganda is a necessary thing to reduce CB cases in the world
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Part III: Conclusion and recommendation
In conclusion, Cyberbullying is a problem that existed for a long time. However, it only
has been cared about recently. And it becomes a serious problem of society. Today teenagers
and student all use social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram…This problem also
happens to students of IBD. This report has helped them to better understand this problem
from the concept, the situation, the influence, the measures… That makes them know how to
solve the problem. When being bullied and not bullying others, this is the value that the
article brings. From the study, the choices of the survey participants were analyzed. About
50% of the respondents said. And because of the main cause of bullying, one of the biggest
reasons (55%) was chosen by jealousy, which has a negative effect on the psychology of the
bullies, even bad. We also bring out the harmful effects that bullying brings a negative mood,
depression, low self-esteem. Besides, this article also provides optimal solutions to help
people handle properly and avoid bullying.
At the end, through conducting the survey, we discussed the reason, the pessimistic results
and have some solutions to control their feeling. Thus, we will give you the best options
when being bullied. On this study,there various steps need to be taken to tackle this problem.
In my opinion, the best thing you can do when being bullied is telling your acquaintances, so
that we can come up with a suitable solution together. When you share and receive sympathy,
I am sure that you will feel much better. When you have too much pressure and bear with
them, it will bring a lot of unintended psychological consequences. So, speaking out is the
greatest resolution to solve your inner anxiety.
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Part V: Appendix and Reference
Appendix
As part of my Bachelor Degree at ISME at National Economics University. We
are conducting a survey that investigates “The attitudes of IBD students towards cyber
bullying”. We will appreciate if you could complete the following table. Any
information obtained in connection with this study that can be identified with you will
be remained confidential.
1. What are the causes for cyber bullies in Vietnam?
2. What makes people attack others in the internet?
3. What effects does having cyber bullying bring to people’s mental health?
4. What possible solutions can be given to deal with cyber bullying?
1) Have you ever been bullied in the internet?
o Yes
o No
2) What did they bully you?
o Posting comments or rumors about you online that are mean, hurtful, or
embarrassing.
o Threatening to hurt you
o Posting a mean or hurtful your picture or video.
o Pretending to be yourself online in order to solicit or post personal or false
information about you.
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o Posting mean or hateful names, comments, or content about any race, religion,
ethnicity or other your personal characteristics online.
o Creating a mean or hurtful webpage about you.
o Doxing, an abbreviated form of the word documents, is a form of online
harassment used to exact revenge and to threaten and destroy the privacy of
individuals by making your personal information public, including addresses,
social security, credit card and phone numbers, links to social media accounts, and
other private data.
3) Impact of cyberbullying on you
o Disordered anxiety
o Dispirited
o Low seft-esteem
o Social setbacks
o Poor grades
o Untrusting of others
o Depression
o Nagative mood
o Increased reticence to attend school
o Others….
4) The bullies are usually
o Having aggressive behavior in general
o Encouraging the behavior of other bullies (including adults or fictional
characters)
o Having obsession with social popularity
o Having acquantance with you (like your family, your friends,..)
o Not knowing
o Others…
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5) What do you think are the main reasons for cyber bullying?
o anger
o revenge
o jealousy
o thirst for difference/famous
o anonymous
o trend and movement
o differences in characteristic
o low seft-esteem
o others…
6) What ways you do you think can deal with haters
o Ignore it
o Block online haters
o Be kind and respectful
o Stick with supporters
o Remind yourself
o Keep being you
o Acknowledge your feeling
o Others…
References
1. Vietnam Insider. 2019. Vietnam Youths Struggle With Cyberbullying - Vietnam
Insider. [online] Available at: <https://vietnaminsider.vn/vietnam-youths-struggle-
with-cyberbullying/> [Accessed 22 March 2020].
2. Plan International and the International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW),
2015. Are Schools Safe And Equal Places For Girls And Boys In Asia?. [online]
Available at: <https://plan-international.org/publications/are-schools-safe-and-equal-
places-girls-and-boys-asia> [Accessed 22 March 2020].
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3. Abrams, A., 2017. The Psychology Of Hate. [online] Psychology Today. Available at:
<https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/nurturing-self-compassion/201703/the-
psychology-hate> [Accessed 22 March 2020].
Thank you
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