CYBERBULLYING IN MALAYSIA: AN ANALYSIS OF THE EXISTING LAWS

Abstract

Cyberbullying incidents have shocked the world, particularly the infamous suicide incident in 2012 involving a 15-year-old victim, Amanda Todd, in Canada. Malaysia is currently facing the same issue and two suicide cases of cyberbullying victims involving school children were reported in 2019 and 2020. The global statistics among 28 countries indicated that Malaysia was ranked sixth in the world and second among the Asia countries in cyberbullying. As such, this paper aims to identify the law regulating such incidents in Malaysia. The methodology used in this paper is library research by referring to legislation, journals, books, conference papers, newspapers, and other periodicals. It was observed that there is no existing legal provision specifically to tackle on cyberbullying cases in Malaysia. Therefore, a new law is needed to address the issues of cyberbullying.