User Manual:Using your Support Circle

Your Support Circle are other Twitter users who you know and trust to publicly back you up when you're getting bullied on Twitter. When you're enduring cyberbullying on Twitter, you can use Predator Alert Tool for Twitter to get help from your Support Circle in one click. Everyone in your Support Circle receives a Direct Message asking them to help you, with a link to the harassing messages.

Why it works

Cyberbullying is a social display of power; bullies want to feel like they have more power than their target. You can think of a Twitter bully a bit like a peacock who struts around showing off his feathers ("I have more feathers, so I get to mate with the female peacock"), or a carnivorous predator ("I have more lions with me than you, so I get to eat first"). In a Twitter fight, their logic is simple: "I have more supporters than you, so you are wrong."

Most people are typically taught two very poor strategies for dealing with bullies:

1. Ignore them, or
2. expose their behavior to an authority figure (like a parent, teacher, or website administrator).

Neither of these strategies are effective. By the time they have completed grade school, bullies have spent a fair amount of energy developing tactics to ensure their abusive behavior is undetected by authority figures who are too distracted to notice their taunts, but who will still be drawn to the target's meltdown when some straw finally breaks the figurative camel's back.

One of these strategies is to distribute their harassment out among a group of their friends. This is why bullies come in cliques. The clique serves both as cover from authority figures and as appeals to popularity to show off how many "more feathers" they have.

Over and over again, we see that the only reliable way to get bullies to stop attacking a target is to have a target's friends back them up. And that is exactly what your Support Circle can do for you.

How to use your Support Circle

If you have not already done so, you need to create your Support Circle. After installing Predator Alert Tool for Twitter:

1. Click on the gear icon in the top-right navigation bar.
2. Click on the "My Support Circle" link:
   
3. The "My Support Circle" dialog will appear, allowing you to enter up to 6 trusted friends to add to your Support Circle:
   
4. When you have entered your friends' Twitter screen names, click the *Save Support Circle button.

Once you have defined your Support Circle, you can ask for their help if you start to receive abusive tweets by clicking on the Get help from your Support Circle link in the More drop-down menu under every tweet:

This button will send a Direct Message with a link to the bullying tweet to everyone in your Support Circle.