The presence of an invisible and broad-based audience is a unique feature of cyberbullying. This study focuses on perceptions and emotions associated with cyberbullying involving a broad-based audience from the victims’ and the audience’s perspectives. This study examines (a) how cyberbullied victims’ emotional responses differ based on different targets (e.g., the incident, the bully, or the audience), (b) how online comments affect the victims’ negative emotions perceived toward different targets, (c) how these comments affect the victims’ predicted audience judgments and the audience’s actual judgments about the victim, and (d) how empathy affects audience perceptions. Appraisal theories of emotion and the spotlight effect are used as theoretical frameworks. One hundred one young adults ages 18-25 years old participated in the online experimental survey with a 2 (perspective: victim vs. audience) × 2 (comment valence: positive vs. negative) x 2 (exposure to audience comments: pretest and posttest) mixed design. Participants read a hypothetical scenario of an outing incident, an involuntarily revealed sexual activity on YouTube, and responded to the questionnaire before and after reading other YouTube users’ comments that were either favorable or unfavorable about the victim. Results indicated that the bully and the audience evoked different negative emotional responses from victims of outing. Positive comments were associated with the victims’ positive reappraisals and lessened the intensity of negative emotions perceived toward the audience. Negative comments were associated with negative reappraisals, but did not increase the intensity of negative emotions. A test of the spotlight effect revealed that victims of outing tended to overestimate the negativity of audience judgments about the victim. Negative comments increased this perceptual discrepancy between the victim and the audience while positive comments minimized it. Empathy facilitated more positive audience perceptions of the victim. The current study discusses the important role of an audience and audience comments in cyberbullying coping.
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