Opening Session:

• Message from His Excellency President of the Republic, Professor Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa
• Message from His Excellency President of the Portuguese Parliament, Professor Augusto Santos Silva

Conference:

Title: Children’s rights and cyberbullying

Summary: All children have the right to live in safety. However, not everyone is safe in the places they go – at home, at school or in the neighborhood – and in particular, on the internet.
Violence can manifest itself in many ways and cyberbullying is one of them.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child recognizes the right of all children to be protected against all forms of violence, at all times and in all contexts, and the State is responsible for developing social policies and programs to prevent abuse and to guarantee the protection of victims. Not guaranteeing children this right, in addition to having a social and economic cost, with an impact on families and societies as a whole, jeopardizes the well-being and full development of children.
In 2015, reaffirming the principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, world leaders committed to eliminating all forms of violence against children by 2030. In this decade for action, between 2021 and 2030, it is urgent to accelerate efforts to put an end to the violence that daily compromises the development and protection of children.
In this session, the latest studies and recommendations from the United Nations and a set of measures that should be adopted to protect children will be discussed.

Speaker: Francisca Magano (Portugal)

Hosts: Cristiane Miranda, Sónia Seixas and Tito de Morais (Portugal)

Title: Understanding Cyberbullycide From a Clinical Perspective

Summary: The mental health aspects of bullycide are significant. With offline humiliation, bullying and physical aggression, there are typically more physical signs of bruises, cowering and avoidance in hostile environments, self-isolation and witnesses. When the bullying occurs in the virtual environment, it is easier for targets to conceal their pain. Parents and caregivers are often in the dark. This is why medical and mental health professionals play a crucial role in digital abuse prevention, identification, emergency response and recovery. They play a critical role in raising awareness, education and providing targets with a trusted and trustworthy place to land. Dr. Shajiuddin Faraz Mohammed is a US child psychiatrist and father. He heads The Cybersafety Group’s Cyberwellness Division and works with Parry Aftab on creating awareness and professional training for cyberbullying stakeholders. Join them and StopCyberbullying Portugal’s representative, Tito de Morais, in discussing clinical perspectives.

Speaker: Dr. Shajiuddin Faraz Mohammed

Hosts: Parry Aftab (EUA & Canadá) and Tito de Morais (Portugal)

Note: Session in English with simultaneous translation to Portuguese

Título: Addressing Bullying, Cyberbullying, and SEL, in 2023 and Beyond

Summary: Working to improve children’s social and emotional learning, and their peer relationships, faces new and significant challenges in 2023 and beyond. The global Coronavirus Pandemic exacerbated many of the psychological and lifestyle changes that had threatened children’s mental and social health even prior to 2020. Most notably, issues such as screen time, anxiety, depression, bullying and cyberbullying posed threats to children before the Pandemic and have since become even greater concerns in the face of sustained social isolation and loss of healthy socializing with peers. This presentation will review updated research on how children are coping and how their social relationships are currently presenting. Concrete strategies used by the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center in schools worldwide will be discussed.

Speaker: Dr. Elizabeth Englander (EUA)

Hosts: Cristiane Miranda and Tito de Morais (Portugal)

Note: Session in English with simultaneous translation to Portuguese

Título: Social Media & Bullied Suicide; The Path to  Maryland’s Grace’s Law

Summary: Mother Christine McComas shares a personal look at the life of Grace McComas, a beautiful child born joyful, who became an active, bright and communicative teen but was shockingly lost to suicide related to Cyberbullying at age 15. Grace was abused by malicious, threatening and dehumanizing cyber abuse. Screen-shot proof was shared with schools, police and courts as for months they sought help that never came. Grace’s anguished family immediately shared her struggle and their inability to save her and worked towards the unanimous passage of Grace’s Law (Maryland, U.S.A.) which protects children from cyber abuse and holds responsible those who would hurt them. Grace’s mother Christine advocates for continued social change (via Grace McComas Memorial on FB) by urging all to “Remember G.R.A.C.E., by Giving Respect And Compassion to Everyone”, which she believes is the path to peace and increased respect for human dignity.

Speaker: Christine McComas (EUA)

Hosts: Parry Aftab (EUA & Canadá) and Tito de Morais (Portugal)

Note: Session in English with simultaneous translation to Portuguese

Title: Judgments and Criticisms from the Perspective of Nonviolent Communication

Summary: In this session we are going to talk about the powerful message that judgments carry. It is also Nonviolent Communication to listen to the requests that are hidden in tragic behavior. In this meeting we will talk about how to open conversations that transform behaviors.

Speakers: Liliane Lima Sant’Anna (Brasil) e Cristiane Chaves Reis (Brasil)

Hosts: Cristiane Miranda and Tito de Morais (Portugal)

Title: Verbal Aikido: From Conflict to Conversation

Summary: The session will begin with an overview of the Verbal Aikido practice – the fundamental aspects and how practitioners train and develop empowering reflexes. The guests will then be invited to take part in a simple exercise to start to use Verbal Aikido posture and feel the effects of practice. Finally, the participantes can ask questions and even verbally attack the VA presenter so as to demonstrate the practice further.

Speaker: Luke Archer (EUA e França)

Hosts: Cristiane Miranda and Tito de Morais (Portugal)

Note: Session in English with simultaneous translation to Portuguese

Title: Positive Education – From Science to the Experience of Well-Being and Peace

Resumo: From the individualistic conception of the human to a radical relational understanding: the focus on positive peace and public happiness. The current economic, political, technological and social models and paradigms make explicit, and reinforce, forms of collective life and social discourses that create conditions for a disconnected society, of authoritarian and violent dominance of powers, of injustices and inequalities, of finite resources wear and tear and inconsequential disregard for the most human and non-human. Only radical relational understanding and action saves us. Celebrating and honoring the Other and the collective goes through new collaborative and dialogic spaces and new existential positions, which refuse narratives of separation, sowers of injustice, exclusion, aggression and destruction of collective goods. We need to rescue forms of action that restore the ability to see at length, to feel, to empathize, and to take co-responsibility for building the world in which we dream of living. These visions are opposed to the proposals of a monologic and myopic world, since they are based on shared inquiry, coordinated action, participation of all in a living together that deepens and takes care of relationships and the common good, and makes scenarios that facilitate social transformation. These actions include compassion, forgiveness, empathy, gentle cooperation, curiosity, servant leadership, astonishment for the Other… in the magic of a co-presence that allows a co-making of the world. Relational goods – dignified and non-instrumental relationships – are a way of building new realities, in which positive peace – and the social structures that maintain and make it viable – allow us to position ourselves towards a happiness that, much more than than individual, it is collective and citizen.

Speaker: Prof. Drª. Helena Águeda Marujo (Portugal)

Hosts: Cristiane Miranda and Tito de Morais (Portugal)

Title: Is Peace a Luxury or a Necessity? Introduction to the Peace Education Program

Resumo:In the race in which humanity is launched, that of exponential growth, the limits of sustainability have long been reached. The greed placed on material conquests pushes peace to the bottom of the list of priorities, as if peace were a luxury. Is it really so? Peace, like water, food and breathing, is a fundamental need. The Peace Education Program prompts further reflection on this topic and inspires the experience of peace from our inner resources, based on our strengths, not weaknesses. In the presentation of the program, short videos will be shown, in relation to which the participants will be able to express their reflections.

Speaker: António Reca de Sousa (Portugal)

Hosts: Cristiane Miranda and Tito de Morais (Portugal)

Title: Cyberbullying and suicide prevention

Summary: What is the relationship between cyberbullying and suicide? What other forms of online violence might trigger this issue? How can parents, schools and health professionals act and what materials should be made available or developed to increase public awareness, reduce risks and prevent violence and cyberbullying? These are some of the reflections I will bring, inviting everyone to assume our roles to reduce this violence.

Speaker: Karen Scavacini (Brasil)

Hosts: Cristiane Miranda and Tito de Morais (Portugal)

Title: Bullying and Cyberbullying in Schools – A Solution

Summary: Quando falamos de bullying e cyberbullying a escola surge como um dos principais meios onde este se desenvolve, o que se justifica por ser um local onde crianças e jovens passam grande parte do seu tempo. Therefore, when we talk about solutions, the school has a fundamental role. A lot has already been done, but they usually translate into “band-aid” type of solutions. The question that arises is: but how can schools prevent and combat this phenomenon in an effective, coherent and continuous way? That’s what Tito de Morais and Cristiane Miranda will talk about in this session.

Speakers: Cristiane Miranda and Tito de Morais (Portugal)

Host: Catarina Marques (Portugal)

Title: More school, better family: for a culture of peace, against school violence!

Summary: Data from the latest UNICEF report (2018) – An Everyday Lesson #ENDviolence in Schools – A Daily Lesson to End Violence in Schools – suggests an unsettling picture: “half of the world’s students aged between 13 and 15-year-olds – around 150 million young people – report experiencing peer violence at or near school”. The cost of this violence is estimated at 7 trillion dollars. The CM and CMTV, in their fundamental mission of informing and providing public service, especially with regard to the broadest and most profound dimensions of national public life, propose to develop an action plan in order to bring to the public sphere another fundamental question: to know the reality of school violence in our country, committing the family and the school to a culture of peace that empowers citizenship!

Speaker: Paulo Sargento (Portugal)

Hosts: Cristiane Miranda and Tito de Morais (Portugal)

Title: Deconstructing Hate: A Case Study with Minecraft Servers

Summary: This session will present a case study that analyzed over 1.5 million messages exchanged across three third-party Minecraft servers with thousands of players to identify how extremism and harassment happen and are addressed. It will also bring up the challenges and opportunities for improvement identified from the study.

Speaker: Maria Oliveira Tamellini (Portugal)

Hosts: Cristiane Miranda and Tito de Morais (Portugal)

Title: Kindness The New Cool: Promoting A Supportive Approach To End Online Bullying Among Young People

Summary: The session begins by noting what cyberbullying is, with empahsis on the importance of recognising feelings and how as adults we can create opporturities for young people to connect with one another to identify emotions and the perspective of others thereby allowing them show compassion, communicate and solve their problems in a more peaceful way so as to get along with others hence reducing instances of online bullying.

Speaker: Confidence Osein (Nigeria)

Hosts: Cristiane Miranda and Tito de Morais (Portugal)

Note: Session in English with simultaneous translation to Portuguese

Title:Cyberbullyng Prevention & Tackling Technologies

Summary: During this live, we’ll be talking with the Executive Director of a company that developed a moderation solution that uses artificial intelligence to help protect individuals, families and businesses against online toxic content.

Speaker: Matthieu Boutard

Hosts: Cristiane Miranda and Tito de Morais (Portugal)

Note: Session in English with simultaneous translation to Portuguese

Title: Bullying and Cyberbullying: Books from Brazil

Summary: In this session, we will be talking to three Brazilian authors who have written books about their research in the field of bullying and cyberbullying and about their personal experiences as mothers of young people who were victims of bullying or cyberbullying.

Speakers: Aloma Felizardo, Cyntia Russano and Lucia Helena Santiago (Brasil)

Hosts: Sónia Seixas and Tito de Morais (Portugal)

Title: Sexting, Videos & Internet

Summary: In the session we will explore topics such as consent, sexting, non-consensual intimate images, non-consensual pornography, revenge porn, sextortion, image-based sexual violence, its relationship with bullying and cyberbullying, as well as legislation in Portugal, social media, aggressors’ motives and motives to sharing, how aggressors have access to materials, consequences for victims and solutions.

Speakers: Inês B. Marinho, Maria João Faustino and Mariana Fernandes (Portugal)

Hosts: Cristiane Miranda and Tito de Morais (Portugal)

Title: Bullying & Cyberbullying: Violence and Abuse in Sport and European Policies

Summary: In this session we will talk about interpersonal violence in sport, namely in the field of bullying and other forms of abuse. Interpersonal violence in sport, particularly in the field of bullying and other forms of abuse, is worrying, and has been the focus of attention by the scientific community and various sports bodies. The scientific literature on bullying, in this particular context, has been increasing, especially over the last decade. The contributions of researchers have made it possible to develop more effective forms of prevention and intervention. However, there are other forms of violence and abuse that must also be taken into account in the development of sport policies and prevention and intervention programmes. In this sense, in addition to promoting reflection on violence and abuse in sport, in particular bullying, we will also talk about European safeguarding policies in sport. Since the integration of sport as a European matter in 2007, various policies have been developed at different levels with a view to preventing and protecting children in the specific context of sport. In this sense, the presentation to be carried out focuses on the characterization and respective process of implementation of these policies.

Speakers: Bruno Avelar Rosa and Miguel Nery (Portugal)

Hosts: Sónia Seixas and Tito de Morais (Portugal)

Title: Cyberbullying among adolescents: impacts on health, prevention possibilities and other digital violence

Summary: In this session, we will present a little of our trajectory of studies on the topic of cyberbullying and other digital violence, some of the main results of the works developed during the master’s and doctoral period, such as: the magnitude of the phenomenon, the impacts on health, the experiences of adolescents of the second year of high school in two Brazilian capitals and possibilities of prevention.

Speaker: Taiza Ramos Ferreira (Brasil)

Hosts: Sónia Seixas and Tito de Morais (Portugal)

Title: Bullying and cyberbullying in sport and beyond

Summary: Ricardo Quaresma shares with us his experience with bullying and cyberbullying, both in sport and in his personal life, how it affects him, how he deals with these situations.

Speaker: Ricardo Quaresma (Portugal)

Hosts: Cristiane Miranda and Tito de Morais (Portugal)

Title: Combating cyberbullying – exploring what works

Summary: This roundtable will close the IV Global StopCyberbullying Telesummit, organised by Cyberbullying.pt and will bring together European experts in the fight against cyberbullying to explore the causes behind cyberbullying, trends, what can be done to prevent it and what we know about what works in tackling this problem at European level. We will hear from experts in Italy, Germany and the UK about effective programmes and interventions and what we can all learn about our role in combating this type of abuse and ensuring children can grow in safer environments without fear of abuse. We’ll hear from experts in Italy, Germany and the UK about effective programs and interventions and what we can all learn about our role in tackling this type of abuse and ensuring children can grow up in safer environments without fear of abuse.

Speakers: Alex Holmes, Cecilia Stajano e Martin Drechsler

Hosts: Almudena Lara e Tito de Morais

Closing Session: Cristiane Miranda, Sónia Seixas e Tito de Morais