Linguistic and Behavioral Mechanisms of Cyberbullying Among Chinese Social Media Users: A Scoping Review

Cyberbullying among Chinese social media users has been described in relation to hostile words, pragmatic meanings, group alignment, identity positioning, and platform-mediated amplification. This scoping review mapped the linguistic and behavioral mechanisms reported in English-language studies indexed in Scopus and Web of Science concerning target-directed harm in Chinese social media contexts. Following the Arksey and O’Malley framework, Levac refinements, and PRISMA-ScR guidance, searches of Scopus and Web of Science identified 592 records. The 2015–2025 publication-date criterion was applied during screening. After deduplication, screening, and full-text eligibility assessment, 19 sources were included. Data were charted and synthesized thematically across lexical and lexico-semantic features, pragmatic strategies, discursive processes, and platform conditions. Four patterns emerged: evaluative labeling and semantic degradation; indirect aggression conveyed through irony, metaphor, insinuation, and culturally situated meanings; participant alignment and identity construction associated with legitimized hostility; and repetition, visibility, and collective participation associated with amplified harmful communication. Within this indexed English-language evidence base, cyberbullying was recurrently represented as a cumulative communicative process in which linguistic actions acquired harmful force through interpretation, social positioning, and social and technological circulation. Effective identification therefore requires attention to contextual meaning, interactional sequences, target relations, and platform dynamics, rather than reliance on isolated offensive terms. The review offers a provisional behavioral–linguistic framework derived from this indexed English-language evidence base while identifying methodological, platform, language, and database gaps for future empirical research.