Quyen Tran
Instructor:
Dr. Roland Specht-Jarvis
Eng 191
12/16/12
The Development of Social Media in
Vietnam
Due to technology’s improvement with the speed of a
hurricane these days, social media services and networks, obviously, have
become a significant part of the world and in Vietnam particularly. It wouldn’t
be over emphasizing if one was to say that social media is considered a spiritual
meal of Vietnamese in today’s life. Social media is everywhere and people are
using it with a variety of purposes. The development of social media from the
past until now has created a very different look of human life in Vietnam.
What is social media? “When we talk about media
representations we are referring to texts (in the broad sense, which include
images) that circulate in the media space and carry symbolic content: new
photographs and articles, advertisements, radio programmes, YouTube videos,
blogs, Facebook pages, etc.” (Orgad 230-17). Basically, if you are a user of
Facebook, Twitter, or Blogs, you are in the domain of social media. Social
media is a very broad term to define. It contains so many aspects involving
communication. “The best way to define social media is to break it down. Media
is an instrument on communication, like a newspaper or a radio, so social media
would be a social instrument of communication” (Nations). Social bookmarking,
social news, social networking, social photos and videos sharing, wikis, or
simply television and radio are all social media.
In the decade of the 1970s back in Vietnam,
social media was a very strange term. Vietnam is a very small country and at
that time, it was not even a developing country. There were so many
disadvantages for people lives back then due to wars. For a while, Vietnamese
did not know about anything called social media due to the limitation of
trading with the world. The only social instrument they had during the time of
the war was radios. The 1970s was the time in which all the wars were in a
process of ending. After the Vietnam War had been officially ended, it was the
time for the government to repair and develop the country, especially social media.
Some modern machines had been settled
in Vietnam in the time of the renovation. The most significant part of the
renovation is the appearance of televisions. “From earliest history, media have
shaped and directed human society and the individual consciousness” (Zyl and
Tomaselli 168-50). However, there was only a small amount of televisions sold in
Vietnam and people did not have that much money to buy a television actually.
There are only some households in the urban area that could afford a television
and rarely people saw a television in the countryside. It is very normal if at
that time in Vietnam, you see a group of children standing outside of a household
watching television through the windows, or even adults and old people in a
village gathering together in a household who own a television with a demand of
discovering, collecting information and acquiring knowledge through
communication on the social media tool.
Compared to other countries and the
United States, Vietnam needed pretty much a while to get there at the top of
the development of social media. According to Enotes, “The United States as a
whole may have seemed to linger in a cultural and political malaise during the
1970s, but the media were more active than ever.” This is a domination of
televisions in the United States when varieties of programs are supplied to
different kinds of audiences and ages. Also, in the late 1970s, the invention
of cable and chances of watching television in color instead of black and white
only, had brought televisions and social media generally to a new vision in the
United States. “Advances in satellite technology and cable allowed the
television news media direct coverage of international events, while the
increased availability of color television sets made the medium even more
popular than before” (Enotes). Also, besides the reigns of television, “Radio
stations and magazines continued to cater to more narrowly defined audiences,
while newspapers added features and whole sections designed to appeal to
specific interests,” according to Enotes. Social media in the United States was
much more popular and advance than in Vietnam in that political malaise time.
In the modern life, it sounds so impossible if there
is a day of a life routine without social media. Social media has been
improving rapidly from the past ten years in Vietnam. It has changed people
lives there. In the leverage of development amongst the world, the improvement
of social media in Vietnam is the most visible factor. Television is now a
least tool of media which every single household, even in the countryside,
could afford. The price of a television now is also very affordable and all
kinds of popular brands are available in the market in order to supply a higher
demand of consumers. People now need a higher level of communication following
the development of the other countries. Television is no longer reigning.
It is the era of Internet instead. “It is certain,
that we are currently in the middle of a significant change in the way we
communicate with one another, a change brought by the Internet” (Poe 337-203). It’s
definitely applied to Vietnam. If, in the past, people acquiring all information
and knowledge through televisions or newspapers and contacting each other by mail
or home phone only on the other hand, a variety of communication techniques
such as cellphones, Facebook, or Wikis take the predominance in the present. It
is no longer in the era of gathering together around a television or contacting
by mail, it’s now texting, Facebook-ing and Googling. According to the
statistic of Factbrowser, “Vietnam has 109.1 MM mobile subscribers and 27.8 MM
internet users.” These statistic in the past might be just a super tiny number.
Social media in general has a huge impact on
Vietnamese lives due to many advantages it has brought. Yahoo messenger and
Facebook are some popular social networking tools which have been used the most
in the country recently. Due to the open of education to the world, the number
of students who are going abroad for studying is increasing considerably. As a
result, social media became an important manner for students abroad to contact
their family back home. Students could chat or call worldwide via Yahoo
Messenger without paying any fee. Meanwhile, the family back home could also
update their children status and pictures through Facebook or Instagram. What
could be more convenient than that?
Furthermore, forums and blogs are now preferred as
spaces of sharing and acquiring knowledge. Vietabroad is a forum of Vietnamese
students abroad. This is an online community where all Vietnamese students
around the world share their experiences. It is a free space for the students
to comment, chat, or ask questions. From the forum, students who are new or are
going to study abroad would gather plenty of useful tips and information from
the long-year-study abroad students. The website Webtretho is another instance
of an online community where people in all ages share their problems in the
daily life and look for solutions from the other members. And then, the most
“powerful” website for young people, “Zing” has attracted a considerable number
of members as well as accesses. The site provides a variety of functions such
as music downloading, news, trends, advertising, and so on. Definitely, social media today is the best
instrument for a person to interact with the community.
Social media is also where the target
of advertising hits with an aim of approaching users. According to Factbrowser,
“81 % of online Vietnamese consumers use social media to make purchase
decisions.” As awareness, tons of new or even already popular brands depend on
social media to promote their products. Some of the Vietnamese distributors
such as Downy and Coca-Cola have seen the advance of spreading out trends and
news. They have invested for advertising in order to enhance their profit by
the power of social media. As a result, the profit these companies have earned
is considerable due to the increasing consumption.
However, even though Vietnam has been
making a revolution of social media, the country still has several serious
disadvantages of moving forward. Until now, the predominant of population, who
trusting and using the Internet and the online word are mostly the young generations.
As a statistic stated on the Factbrowser, “97% of Vietnam Internet users ages
15-24 use social media.” The elder people ages from 60 or even some cases of
age 40 are rarely familiar with social media tools such as social networking
and the other searching tools. It does not mean that they are not aware of the
advantages of social media as well as technology, but they have been certain
that they are too old to learn and discover new things. Old people mostly still
trust in the printed word such as newspapers, magazines, and televisions. This
is a reduction in number of Internet users.
Vitenam, on the other hand, has a
limited of credit card uses. Therefore, social media in the trading aspect is
still a limitation. In the United States, along with stores and shopping malls,
every single brand has its own online selling site in order to make it the most
convenient for consumers to purchase products. Credit cards and some other
payment methods such as Paypal or VISA are using broadly. Companies and stores
therefore enhance their income a lot more. Meanwhile, Vietnam consumers need to
go to banks and get through a long process to send money to sellers if they
want to purchase stuff in distance. Otherwise, there is only one way left that
the buyers get to make a ride to the local store that they want to purchase
products from. It seems like Vietnamese are in need of a modification in credit
card uses and online trading.
And then, the “lack of Twitter” also
indicates a disadvantage of social media in the country. “On a global
perspective, more than half of Twitter unique users (56.59%) are located in the
US” (Lim). The statistic in Vietnam is not outstanding meanwhile. Most of
Vietnam Internet users are not familiar or misunderstand the purpose of Twitter.
People prefer Facebook with a percentage of 87% in users and 61% of daily uses
(Jana). According to Do, “Twitter is for people you want to meet, and Facebook
is for people you already met,” but Vietnamese still need times to figure it
out and familiarize with Twitter.
“Despite the prominence of “Twitter
revolutions,” “color revolutions,” and the like in public debate, policymakers
and scholars know very little about whether and how new media affect
contentious politics” (Turow). There was a time when Facebook was banned in
Vietnam by the government. The reason is that “It may be easier for a hostile
regime to block access to Facebook during a period of social turmoil than to
stop people from putting fliers on lamp-posts,” according to Aday. It was such
a hard time because Facebook has become a significant networking site. Its role
of communicating is worldwide. Without Facebook, Vietnamese, especially young
people seems to lose their right arm in their communicating purpose. Facebook banned really limited the ability to
updating news, interact with the world, or even makes a limitation in business.
Facebook users, however, did not surrender. There were many ways invented to
unlock Facebook which were provided in Vietnam. Young people, especially, would
try any solution to access to Facebook because the role of it is significant,
losing it means losing the ability to interact with others.
In conclusion, social media has been
enhanced rapidly in the revolution of Vietnam. It changes the way of life
obviously due to an open in social networking to the world as an increasing of
Internet uses. Social networking such as Facebook or Yahoo messenger has become
crucial not only for younger generation but also parents and elder people.
Despite, social media in Vietnam need times to catch up with the world because
of some limitations, Vietnamese lives are visibly changed in a better way by
the development of social media.
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