Internet, power, and blogging in Vietnam

Abstract

The Internet in Vietnam has energized the economy and communications. Vietnamese soci[1]ety found in it a space for discussion and socialization that has managed to escape, to some extent, the traditional state control over the media. The controversial Cybersecurity Law, approved in 2018, is just the most recent expression of a trend followed by the Communist Party of Vietnam to create control measures over virtual space that allow it to maintain and consolidate its political authority and its revolutionary project of market socialism. The work examines and reviews the political use and rationality of the one-party govern[1]ment’s Internet control instruments, in the face of the emergence and growing influence of political blogging and social networks, “subversive” challenges for the Party. This from technopolitics as a possible interpretive approach.