Systematic Literature Reviews in Cyberbullying/cyber Harassment: A Tertiary Study

A number of systematic literature reviews have been conducted in order to understand cyberbullying phenomenon. Tertiary studies are carried out to provide a holistic view of an area by collating literature at a meta-level. This study appraises systematic literature reviews in cyberbullying to investigate different dimensions, trends and quality of secondary studies. The tertiary study was conducted using four databases for selecting studies published till November 2020. A total of 50 secondary studies were analysed. Different demographic and temporal trends were investigated by finding out the frequency of secondary studies in terms of publication year, publication venues and type of synthesis conducted. The thematic analysis of studies showed eight dimensions in which cyberbullying research was carried out. The quality of the systematic reviews was also measured using Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE) criteria and quality trends were investigated in terms of time, venue and cyberbullying dimensions. The earlier trend in the literature indicates that there had been a considerable focus on measuring the effects and prevalence of cyberbullying by using various measurement strategies. In recent years, the focus has shifted towards designing and evaluating interventions to deal with the increasing rate of cyberbullying. Furthermore, artificial intelligence techniques have also been reported for automated detection of cyberbullying. Our findings also suggest that the researchers are still trying to conceptualize the phenomenon of CB, its theoretical underpinnings and exploring its relationship with other socio-economic factors and related personality traits. The findings of this tertiary study have implications for researchers in directing new areas to conduct further studies.