Globalisation, citizen journalism and the nation state: A Vietnamese perspective

Editors: Allan, S. and Thorsen, E.

Pages: 153-162

Publisher: Peter Lang

Place of Publication: New York/London

ISBN: 9781433102967

Abstract:

While there is a prolific literature on the rise of citizen journalism in the developed world, little has been written about this phenomenon in developing countries. Where these countries are concerned, the Western media tend to celebrate citizen media as an autonomous counterweight to state censorship. The emergence of blogging in the little-known Vietnamese media environment, for example, has been depicted as having “taken (the country) by storm and spawned an alternative communications universe to dusty state media” (AFP, 2007).

This chapter looks at citizen journalism in Vietnam to show that this kind of celebratory coverage, often based on cursory anecdotal evidence from a technological determinist perspective, might be naive and unhelpful in providing a comprehensive understanding of the true power of citizen media in the developing world. To assess the extent to which citizen journalism is transforming socio-political processes in Vietnam, I will take a systematic look at how it operates both in global and local socio-political contexts. It is my contention that while globalised technological advances allow citizen journalism to develop beyond the control of the nation state in some aspects, it is also the case that its influence is largely kept within the boundaries of tolerance set down by the state’s political elite.

Source: Manual

Preferred by: An Nguyen