Denise Dunne currently works as a Television Producer with RTÉ Television. Denise has over twenty years of production experience in TV and Theatre working with RTÉ, TG4 and Sky Sports. She has worked across all genres from Current Affairs, Lifestyle, Entertainment, Documentaries and Young Peoples. A Communications graduate from DCU with coaching and counselling skills Denise has a keen interest in the advances in social media and it’s impact particularly on celebrities and children.
The study used a mixed-methods approach through the collection and analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data. 134 Celebrities were recruited . Quantitative methods were used to measure the personality variables, self-efficacy and cyber harassment levels. Qualitative questions asked participants to self-report their experiences of cyber harassment, their reactions to cyber harassment and which platforms they had experienced it on.
This study aimed to investigate the types and levels of cyber harassment experiences of celebrities across social media and see if there were any potential relationships between self-efficacy and extraversion and levels of cyber harassment experienced.
This study provides empirical research confirming the high levels of cyber harassment of celebrities across social media, which was previously reliant on anecdotal information and identifies the need for further research in this area.
Whilst no significant relationships were found between self-efficacy, extraversion and cyber harassment. However, the qualitative research results revealed that 99% of participants had experienced some cyber harassment, with 86% having experienced cyber harassment of an intimate nature. Twitter was the platform where most participants experienced cyber harassment. The most popular reaction was to block the person who harassed them; 98% of participants had some reaction.