Bias-based peer victimization focuses on social group membership of the victim, and it has been associated with more severe mental health outcomes than non-bias based forms of victimization. However, little research has examined how victims are affected by, and respond to, these experiences in an online context. The first study of this dissertation sought to fill these gaps in the literature, examining the prevalence, psychological impacts, and coping strategies of bias-based forms of cyber victimization among a sample of 808 emerging adults. Our findings indicated that gender and race impacted the risk for victimization, and that bias-based victimization was particularly distressing for racial and ethnic minority participants. Furthermore, coping strategies in response to online aggression varied in their effectiveness. Reporting strategies were associated with a higher emotional impact of victimization, while social support-seeking strategies were correlated with decreases in emotional impact, particularly among women. The current project also examined how various social identities interact to affect the risk and experience of victimization. Our second study included a sample of 397 young women of color to examine the ways in which membership in multiple marginalized social categories may place youth at an increased risk for cyber victimization. We found that women who were targeted for their gender and race simultaneously (i.e., racialized sexualized victimization) were targeted more frequently and experienced a more severe emotional impact of the experience than those targeted based on one social identity. Moreover, women who experienced racialized-sexualized victimization were unlikely to report the situation, and they were more likely than all other groups to seek social support. Our findings have critical implications for prevention and intervention efforts to combat race-based, sex-based, and racialized-sexualized forms of peer victimization.
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