Cyberbullying causes serious psychological harm, while user-initiated anti-cyberbullying actions play an important bottom-up role in online environments. Based on Social Identity Theory, this study examines the association between users’ online reputation (verification status, VIP level, and credit level) and anti-cyberbullying engagement, as well as the moderating role of online profile. Using 1.76 million Weibo posts from 2016 to 2020, a BI-LSTM model identified 41,097 anti-cyberbullying posts. Two measures were constructed: engagement frequency (ACEF) and engagement persistence (ACEP), which captures the temporal distribution of participation. The results show that higher platform-recognized reputation is positively associated with both more frequent and more sustained anti-cyberbullying participation. This positive association is stronger for users whose profiles reflect freedom-oriented or security-oriented values, and weaker for those with simplicity-oriented self-presentations. A user–month panel analysis further indicates that reputation-related social visibility in the preceding period is positively associated with anti-cyberbullying engagement in the subsequent period, consistent with temporal ordering. By combining large-scale behavioral data with Social Identity Theory, this study shows how status, visibility, and identity salience jointly shape bottom-up anti-cyberbullying norm enforcement on social media.
Dong et al. (2026) studied this question.