Confronting Cyberbullying Epidemic Analysis

The issue of cyberbullying has been a prevalent topic that has been at the forefront of many discussions since the birth of the internet. Multiple media sources have covered it and attempted to help troubled parents protect their children’s online experience. “It’s Time to Stop the Cyberbullying Epidemic” by Dr. Phil McGraw and “Confronting Cyberbullying” by Peter Levy are some examples. In his article for The Huffington Post, Dr. Phil attempts to empathize with parents in order to convey his methods to stop cyberbullying. Phil Levy’s article in THE Journal carries the same message of cyberbullying and how to prevent it, but he presents his to a different audience with a more thorough way to solve it. “It’s Time to Stop the Bullying Epidemic” …show more content…
The methods that “Time to Stop” and “Confronting Cyberbullying” undertake to support their claims are very similar in practice, but differ in the reasons as to why they do them. In “Time to Stop”, Dr. Phil supports his article mainly with the credibility that he has acclaimed from his television show. Instead of factually supporting his claims, he mostly relies on the notion that the reader will believe him because of his merit and fame. Peter Levy takes a similar approach. He rarely cites his evidence, and gives the reader a plethora of factual claims that may seem unsupported. The reasons that these two articles take similar approaches do differ, however. Dr. Phil’s reliance on credibility is due to the fact that his article is in a popular source like The Huffington Post. The readers of his article would not expect thorough fact checking or for his work to be cited properly. This may also be due to the fact that he didn’t think it was necessary. Dr. Phil’s popularity is so widespread that he wouldn’t need to support his claims because the reader would accept his claims as truth as a result of his credibility. Peter Levy’s non-inclusion of factually supported claims is because his article was published in a scholarly source. By his article being included in a scholarly source, the reader knows that it was subjected to scrupulous peer review and fact checking. Levy assumes that the reader is familiar with his topic, and that they would be familiar with the concept of peer review. “Time to Stop” and “Confronting Cyberbullying” are similar in their exclusion of factually supported claims, but the reasons that they do so are due to the sources that they are published