Violência e cultura digital: o YouTube e o cyberbullying de alunos do ensino médio contra os professores

Abstract

The pedagogical relationship established between teachers and students has always been marked by the presence of ambivalence of feelings towards the teaching figure. Nowadays, such a relationship is being reconfigured in the context of digital culture to the point where manifestations of violence take on new guises because students use their cell phones to create videos that show teachers being beaten and humiliated in the classroom. In fact, in times of digital culture, hatred towards teachers has manifested itself in the form of cyberbullying, violence practiced through the use of digital technologies in today's cultural industry. Compared to the well-known cases of school bullying, cyberbullying against teachers is considered even more violent given the ad infinitum reproduction of aggressive and humiliating images and comments in cyberspace. Although there is a growth of videos published by adolescent students in social networks containing aggressions against teachers, Brazilian research on this phenomenon is still incipient. Therefore, this research aimed to investigate the reasons that lead high school students to practice cyberbullying against their teachers by publishing images and vexatious and demeaning comments from their teachers on the social network YouTube. Anchored in the theoretical framework of the Critical Theory of Society, this research is divided into four parts. The first part deals with the concept and topicality of the cultural industry and its implications for the cultural and psychic formation of individuals as it is understood that it is in the context of the spread of digital technologies of the current cultural industry that the practice of cyberbullying is made possible and increased. The second part characterizes the level of education in which the virtual aggressions practiced by students against teachers has become increasingly frequent, namely high school. The third part presents the definitions of bullying and cyberbullying as well as discusses the practices of violence against teachers in the context of digital culture, especially the virtual aggressions. The fourth and final part analyzes the most pertinent images and comments on three videos available on YouTube that contain high school students assaulting and humiliating their teachers. Student cyberbullying teaches that if digital technologies in today's cultural industry can be used to abuse teachers, they can also be used to bring teachers and students closer to the educational process as long as critical understanding of the technology itself is realized rather than simply prohibit and/or restrict its use in the classroom.