Online Bullying: What is Our Role?

I have recently been thinking a lot about what I would like to focus my research on for the Mass Media paper and have been especially interested in the issues surrounding online or cyber bullying. As I am beginning my research there are many questions that I have, especially when it comes to dealing with online bullying in the classroom. 

My biggest concern is what can we as teachers do?? Are we even allowed to give consequences for online bullying between students if it is done on their own time and off of school grounds? Just because it is affecting our students, do we have the right to interfere in things that students are doing at home? We can discuss the issue with parents but if they do not cooperate is there nothing we can do from there? Also, how would we find out about the bullying since so much of it is unaccessible to us? Kids might post things on facebook or other sites that we cannot see or the students might delete the comments and deny the bullying. We also may not know about the bullying before it gets way out of hand. This gets in to what is even defined as online bullying.

I think the most important thing for us to do is to not ignore the issue and pretend it doesnt exist because it is not something that happens when we are there. I like the idea of role-playing for online bullying just like in other anti-bullying education because it helps students to see the actual consequences of their bullying and how just because they are staring at a screen and not another student, their words make an impact and create real feelings. I think another really important thing is to get the parents involved and educated about online bullying so that when students are at home, they have someone who is aware and can possibly monitor what their child is doing online.