When considering a Civic Media
issue that is interesting and something that could be supported by a digital
platform and a social media aspect of the internet- I immediately turned to
children and Facebook. Children are very involved on the Internet and because
of that I know parents are more involved also. I wanted to examine the platform
of StopBullying.Gov because before starting Communication studies, I was
originally on the field of Education. Topics about children and parents really
interest me and I know they are topics with a lot of subtopics and continuous
change.

When I was student teaching for the first two years of
college, I was given the chance to observe kids in schools. When a child
misbehaved, I often heard “don’t make me call your mother” from the teachers. I
began to wonder why it was always the mothers being called and never the
fathers. Then after talking to a few professors about it, they considered the
idea that fathers were pushing the “get tough, suck it up, stand up for
yourself, brush it off, or be brave” ideas. These ideas could quickly go from
common phrases to an incident within bullying. Parent’s roles in bully
prevention are interesting and I want to figure out how those roles are
different especially between the two different parents.

The question that this project will be observing will be:

“Why are women involved in the StopBullying.gov platform more so compared to men?”

 While looking at the StopBullying Platform on Facebook, the
majority of the posts and likes were from women, I wanted to study the reason
as to why? Was it because these mothers are as many people say ‘Helicopter
Moms’ or was it because they were generally just more evident on Facebook? When
looking up what a helicopter mom is
it’s a parent who pays extremely close attention to a child or children's
experiences. But then when looking up pictures for a ‘Helicopter Dad’ I got the
first image as a mockery of the idea.

Then I began to look
into the idea of perhaps women are just more dominant on the Facebook world.
This idea came to be true and supported by other studies and this is where the
entire project came together and began. It’s easy
to say that mom’s are more involved because they are around, but why are they
more involved with social media aspects of topics as well. Dad’s can be on the
computer just as much as Mom’s, so why are the mom’s making more of an effort
to be involved. Why are more than half the likes and comments on Facebook from
women? Any child could be bullied, male or female, and yet it is usually the
mothers being called upon to actually make the difference and Stop Bullying.

Even in the Facebook
Platform, besides having the posts and comments mainly by women, the posts and
pictures on the actual website of StopBullying.Gov are for women. This connects
the idea that since the women are on the Facebook page, they then go to the
webpage to search into the ideas further. Women are affecting the platform
because they are more dominant in the platform through the social media pages
it controls.