Ke Huy Quan’s mention of his journey ‘on a boat’ in his acceptance speech likely singled him out for online backlash and media censorship in Vietnam.
China’s fixation on castigating the American agenda risks turning off social media-savvy Vietnamese users, analysis has found.
Surging Covid-19 case numbers, dismal vaccination rates, and new waves of deadlier or more transmissible variants have made the need for shots in arms all the more dire, says Dien Nguyen An Luong.
Vietnamese leaders have both placated tech-savvy youth and maintained their grip on online discourse in a country that currently boasts some 72 million social media users.
Vietnam has sought to tap into social media-fuelled nationalism but is also comfortable letting public sentiment online run its course when this suits it.
The relative success of Vietnam’s contact-tracing app has sparked privacy concerns, but users are wont to give authorities the benefit of the doubt.