Abstract
As information and communication technologies (ICTs) become increasingly integrated into people's daily lives, incidents of online deviant behaviors such as cyberbullying are on the rise. This study investigates the three components of cyberbullying: the power imbalance, the social media characteristics, and the role of bystander intervention. We used social dominance orientation (SDO) to represent the power imbalance component, while anonymity and social presence are the investigated media characteristics. Additionally, we have developed measurement items to examine the impacts of assistant, defender, and outsider bystander reactions on cyberbullies. We were interested in measuring the impact of each component independently and in relation to others. To assess the model, we utilized a vignette-based survey design, gathering 512 data points through Amazon Mechanical Turk across five distinct cyberbullying vignettes. We employed a comparative SEM model to compare which one of the five research models provides a better explanation of the phenomena. Our key findings highlight that SDO and bystander apathy and assistance significantly influence cyberbullying intention, and that media characteristics can amplify the effect of SDO on cyberbullying.