Social Media Class Tackles Cyber Bullying

Katie Rielly helps #BreakTheWall on Wednesday

Oskaloosa, Iowa – The social media class at William Penn University took on one of the fastest methods of bullying with a campaign to help raise awareness of its impact, not only on the person being bullied, but also those who come in contact with it just by seeing it.

The class took an interest in the topic after several recent cases of cyber bullying have made the national news. Katie Rielly, a student in the social media class, used events in Steubenville, Ohio where two teen girls recently plead guilty to sending threatening Tweets. The girls plead guilty to the misdemeanor charge of telecommunication harassment.

Then the plan was to utilize the hashtag #BreakTheWall on the social media platform Twitter, as well as communication through Facebook, another form of social media communication, to help raise awareness of the harm caused by bullying.

The class took it a step further and offered a way for individuals to offer positive reinforcement online, in the form of pictures taken with friends, each holding a sign. The signs would say something positive about the other person in the picture.

William Penn University Professor Matt Wagner, who teaches the social media class, said this was one of the final projects. It was to plan and do a social media campaign of some sort.

Wagner said the project was to explore how you can use social media to achieve a goal and promote some objectives.

The class had discussed some of the “cyber bullying and some of the darker side of online in our class.” This was near the same time that the jury had returned its verdict on the Steubenville rape case Wagner added.

The discussion by the class on cyber bullying lead them to the conclusion that the problem is larger than what is perceived.

The temporary walls made their way from Penn to the Oskaloosa High School, where students and other individuals wrote the hurtful things said to them in cyberspace onto the walls. This was done to establish that words written on social media platforms are just as real and permanent as those written by pen and paper.

Those walls, along with their hurtful comments, then made their way inside Smokey Row, where individuals were able to #BreakTheWall by destroying those words from the wall with a hammer.

If you would like to know more about #BreakTheWall, you can visit them on Facebook Here – https://www.facebook.com/BreakTheWall2013