An Intersectional Feminist Review of the Literature on Gendered Cyberbullying: Digital Girls

Harmful tropes such as the “mean girl” and the “good girl” continue to inform both public dialogue and dominant scholarship around girls and bullying. This article reviews the existing interdisciplinary literature on cyberbullying from an intersectional feminist perspective. The author argues that there are currently two major gaps in dominant developmental psychology, education literature, and mass media discourses on girls and bullying from 2000 to the present: they often neglect the voices of girls themselves and lack intersectional frameworks. Drawing on a multi-year study of gendered cyberviolence and significant literature in girls’ digital culture that takes the voices of girls seriously, the author argues that alternative research methods will help us better understand the complex social phenomenon that is cyberbullying.