Method

Results

To qualify the situations in TRW as indicative of bullying, the criteria described by ^{Olweus (2013}) were applied: repetitiveness, intentionality, and power imbalance. We identified that male students perpetrated most bullying-type behaviors and that this occurred through verbal bullying, which was characterized by derogatory terms and humiliating or vexatious nicknames, among other factors. Other types of violence were verified but not qualified as bullying.

In order to analyze the adult discourses and practices, 16 episodes were selected and analyzed. Three general contexts related to the life of the adolescent were revealed: the school (involvement of the faculty members, management, and other staff with the students), family (bonds established between the adolescents and family members/guardians), and society (involvement of the adolescents with the rights system and its respective operators, such as lawyers and police officers). Tables 1 1a and 2 2a list the scenes selected for the study and the themes that emerged from the analysis. To facilitate the presentation of the data in the tables, themes and categories were synthesized into codes presented in notes.

Table 1: Description and analysis of scenes involving adults from the first season of the series Thirteen Reasons Why 

^Notes: Themes: 1: Institutional control; 2: Adult contact with evidence of violence among adolescents; 3: Attempt to normalize negative behaviors or the phenomenon; 4: Modest availability of specialized help; 5: Lack of quality bond between school-family contexts; 6: Lack of adolescent trust in adults; 7: Establishment of qualitative communication channels between adolescents and adults; 8: Contains the risk of suicide; 9: Lack of recognition of the school environment; 10: Lack of welcoming and investigative posture; 11: Transfer of responsibility; 12: Reinforcement of aggressive behavior; 13: Mention of intervention programs. Categories: CS: Control strategies; MUA: Mistaken understanding of adults; IPS: Intervention and prevention strategies; LCP: Lack of contextual partnerships.

Table 2: Description and analysis of scenes involving adults from the second season of the series Thirteen Reasons Why 

^Notes: Themes: 2: Adult contact with evidence of violence among adolescents; 3: Attempt to normalize negative behaviors or the phenomenon; 4: Modest availability of specialized help; 6: Lack of adolescent trust in adults; 7: Establishment of qualitative communication channels between adolescents and adults; 8: Contains the risk of suicide; 11: Transfer of responsibility; 13: Mention of intervention programs; 14: Institutional control (coercion and punishment); 15: Punishing the victim; 16: Sex education; 17: Multifactorial understanding of the phenomenon; 18: Availability of specialized help; 19: Adult understanding of the phenomenon and its consequences; 20: Perpetuation of the cycle of violence; 21: General understanding of the bullying phenomenon. Categories: CS: Control strategies; MUA: Mistaken understanding of adults; IPS: Intervention and prevention strategies; LCP: Lack of contextual partnerships. Regarding the participants included in the analyses in Tables 1 and 2: Hannah Baker: student, victim of bullying, suicidal; Clay: student, bystander to bullying situations; Alex: student, bystander; Zach: student, bystander; Justin: student, bully; Jessica: student, bystander; Tyler: victimized student; Marcus: student, bully; Courtney: student, bystander; Montgomery: student, bully; Bryce: student, bully; Olivia Baker: Hannah’s mother; Andrew Baker: Hannah’s father; Porter: school counselor; Matt Jensen: Clay’s father; Lainie Jensen: Clay’s mother and school defense attorney; Gary Bolan: principal; Jane Childs: vice principal; Bradley: communications teacher; Dannis Vasquez: attorney for Hannah’s parents’ family; Bill Standall: Alex’s father; Rick: baseball coach; Down: Tyler’s father.

As described in Tables 1 and 2, the communication processes between parents/guardians and children are weak in the family microsystem, making it difficult to understand the bullying experienced or committed by students. This occurs simultaneously when relationships of trust are not built, which increases the adolescents’ experiences of insecurity and lack of protection. The naturalizing reading of the adults in the family about behaviors and anguish, proper to the context and conflicts among students, increases the feeling of helplessness intensely experienced at school. When the adults express concerns, they are related to Hannah’s suicide and how this act could affect their children’s lives or of other students. At this point in the series, attempts are made to open communication channels, which are often thwarted. Nevertheless, during the episodes, parents/guardians also discover their children’s secrets, welcome their anguish, consolidate communication channels, and present feasible alternatives for dealing with the problems experienced at school.

The adolescents’ lack of trust towards adults (teachers, counselors, and principals) was also portrayed in the school microsystem. The vertical relationship and lack of effective/accepting dialogue about issues that permeate the school environment are flagrant. The school authorities are even insensitive and oblivious to what happens in the institution (e.g., graffiti in the bathrooms and verbal aggression). At the same time, as a rule, professionals are unprepared to deal with aspects related to bullying and suicide. Often the victims were blamed for the aggressions they suffered. However, we noted that the adolescents sought to establish more horizontal relationships with the adults.

In terms of mesosystem, the family and school contexts objectively connect only in the scene of the lecture that the school promotes, focusing on the main behaviors indicative of suicide for parents/guardians. The absence of more scenes about the intersection of these contexts suggests that the relationship between school and family occurs occasionally and only when there is a situation/problem. It is also notable that the school and families are concerned about suicide but often neglect cases of sexual harassment, rape, and bullying. This ambivalent scenario favors the conditions for establishing relationships based on the mere transfer of responsibilities between contexts.

At the macro-system level, the broad society portrayed is included only when anti-bullying and suicide prevention programs are mentioned, especially in the dialogues between the school’s lawyers and Hannah’s parents. The transfer of responsibility between school and family is notorious when most scenes occur in the courtroom. At the same time, the difficulty in understanding the complexity of factors involved in bullying or suicidal behavior of young people can be highlighted. After the trial, the lack of understanding of the phenomenon of bullying and its readings based on individual issues stands out. The main themes attributed to the discourses and practices of adults in their respective contexts are presented in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Summary of the main themes identified and the number of occurrences of each one, according to the numbers listed in Tables 5 and 2  

Discussion

In this study, there was a low representation of scenes in which adults directly witnessed bullying situations. Nonetheless, a modest availability of specialized help, movements of transference of responsibility, and the attempt to normalize negative behaviors or the bullying itself stood out. Our findings showed that even when the phenomenon gains fatal proportions among individuals, adults offer little or no skilled help. The tepid understanding of bullying by adults, who often understand it as normal/acceptable adolescent behavior, favors the adoption of coercive and punitive behaviors, which must be avoided in cases of managing the phenomenon, which increases the lack of confidence of adolescents and contributes to the perpetuation of the cycle of violence.

As a reading key, the bio-ecological model provides information that allows one to understand how different levels can articulate themselves, contributing to the occurrence of bullying in schools. These conclusions are not simple and do not solely concern the models that assume the replication of experiences of one context in another; they favor a model of multilevel understanding about how environmental/contextual issues are relevant to understand the phenomenon, going beyond the logic of individual accountability and even contemplating macrosystemic aspects (^{Rivara & Le Menestrel, 2016}).

Specifically, regarding family issues represented in the series, it is clear that it is essential to maintain open communication channels and promote positive relationships and a nonviolent family climate, as reported elsewhere (^{Oliveira et al., 2020}). Preventing and inhibiting bullying behavior cannot be the responsibility of schools alone, even though it is in this space that aggression occurs because its psychosocial roots go through other systemic levels. Parents and caregivers of school-age children and adolescents must mature their perceptions about the problem to take responsibility. At this point, we alert to the responsibility of students who practice bullying at school and often do not have their behavior interpreted as problematic.

In the case of schools, TRW points to different problems, including the lack of appropriate qualifications of professionals to deal with the issue. However, research indicates that one of the factors that best contribute to preventing or reducing bullying in schools is the active responses of teachers (^{Kollerová et al., 2021}). It is necessary to propose a transformation of power relations and that verticalization is not only based on arrogant postures but on establishing authority postures whose goal is to improve the school climate from the very exercise of adulthood, which is composed of subjects capable of assisting in the process of children’s and adolescents’ healthy development.

Given the complexity of interpersonal relationships established in classrooms, teachers may inadvertently actively participate in bullying by reinforcing students’ aggressive behaviors or by requiring students to resolve conflicts among themselves without their due intervention (^{Fung, 2012}). Teachers also hold erroneous beliefs about bullying, such as the assumption that victimized students would not be bullied if they avoided contact with their aggressor or if they knew how to defend themselves from aggression. Another widespread belief is that bullying constitutes a set of normative behaviors that help learn social norms (^{Silva et al., 2014}). These aspects are also related to cultural values that are shared and experienced not only in the school context since they refer to the macro-systemic level and the way people, in general, interpret the problem.

The bioecological model can help shed more light on the daily life presented in TRW, since the teledrama is starred by adolescents and, therefore, an active subject, product, and producer of their development within their context and time (^{Senna & Dessen, 2012}). While giving protagonism to adolescents, the series reveals the inability of traditional social institutions (e.g., family and school) to reorganize themselves to deal with complex problems that plague the daily lives of children and adolescents in contemporary times.

In the series, the interactions established between adults from different contexts (mesosystems) are also portrayed and reveal the lack of understanding of the phenomenon of bullying in a multifactorial way (i.e., viewing it as a problem that happens in the perimeter of the school), but that, in fact, is the responsibility of everyone, including the family and society as a whole (^{Oliveira et al., 2020}; ^{Rivara & Le Menestrel, 2016}). In this sense, it is pivotal to highlight that teachers and other school authorities are in a privileged position to deal with bullying situations. However, these agents will only be able to undertake effective initiatives if changes in the social context often encourage intolerant, violent, or aggressive behavior to resolve conflicts or deal with diversity.

In terms of practical implications, this study points to the importance of adults in minimizing or decreasing the occurrence of bullying in schools. This is especially the case when one realizes, from the data procured in the series, that the phenomenon is not clearly faced by adults and is often tolerated. In this sense, actions to raise awareness among parents, teachers, and other education professionals are encouraged. These actions can use excerpts from TRW as a trigger to raise awareness and discuss the issue with adults. There is also a lack of communication and/or dialogue channels for students to ask adults for help and for schools to create strategies to encourage reporting situations experienced or observed in schools.

Intervention initiatives that include adults are also consistent with multidimensional anti-bullying programs that have already been widely evaluated in the scientific literature. Examples of such interventions are NoTrap! (Italy), Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (different countries), and KiVa (Finland and other countries). The success of these programs in reducing peer violence is mainly justified by the involvement of the whole school and community (^{Gaffney et al., 2021}). Theoretically, these interventions are also in line with the bioecological theory of human development employed herein as a guiding matrix.

Final Considerations

This study examined the television series Thirteen Reasons Why and identified a limited understanding of teachers, parents, and other adults who have witnessed or learned about bullying at school. We realize that the series has the potential to inspire extended reflections on everyday issues and promote awareness among school administrators and civil society about the role of adults in setting goals for preventing and managing bullying in schools. Furthermore, our findings can stimulate other studies to expand the understanding of the theme, especially from the perspective of the strategic role of adults in preventing and inhibiting bullying behavior.

Regarding this study’s limitations, it should be mentioned that this is an analysis of a drama series with a specific context and that, despite keeping a certain verisimilitude with reality, the situations represented are dramaturgical and fictional solutions. Evidently, the scenes portrayed have little or nothing to do with the daily life of Latin American society or schools. It is also possible to notice that, in many situations, a magnifying glass is placed on the phenomena dealt with (bullying, suicide, etc.). In spite of these limitations, given the public repercussion and worldwide dissemination of the series, TRW becomes interesting material as an exercise in understanding different problems, such as bullying.