Date of Award

1-25-2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Department of Psychology: School Psychology

First Advisor

Brea Banks

Abstract

Microaggressions are a form of racism that Solórzano and Huber (2020) argue are understood and evaluated using the basic tenets of Critical Race Theory. Research suggests that high school students experience race- and sexuality-based microaggressions, although little is known about how microaggressive encounters that occur online impact adolescents. Research also suggests that college-age individuals are unlikely to intervene in response to microaggressive situations, but there do not exist any studies that highlight high schoolers’ responses to these transgressions. Although, there is evidence that adolescents experience online victimization based on their race (Tynes et al., 2008). Feelings of school connectedness, offensiveness of the post, knowledge of school policy, and social media rumination may be key factors in understanding how adolescents interpret and respond to online microaggressions. I recruited 134 adolescents to assess these variables and hypothesized that school connectedness, offensiveness, knowledge about school policy, and social media rumination would significantly predict adolescents’ intervention efforts when witnessing a microaggression towards a peer on social media. Results indicated that among the four predictor variables, participants’ feelings of offensiveness of the post explained the most variance in participants’ choice to intervene on microaggressive social media post.

Comments

Imported from Hynes_ilstu_0092E_12081.pdf

DOI

https://doi.org/10.30707/ETD2023.20231004061828814058.999969

Page Count

82

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