Cancel culture in Vietnam and factors that influence people’s attitudes on misconduct by public figures

Absztrakt (kivonat)

The development of social media sites in Vietnam has inevitably brought people more opportunities to connect to the world. However, it also gave rise to a new social phenomenon “cancel culture.” Although cancel culture has been formed since early 2014 and became popularized in 2018 in the West, the phenomenon of cancel culture only started to prevail two years ago in Vietnam. Cancel culture is generally established upon the polarization of the public’s opinions on certain matters, while the reasons for the extreme opinions are varied. Due to the novel nature of the phenomenon in Vietnam, research has not been conducted to investigate the subject until this date. Therefore, this paper aims to better understand the cancel culture phenomenon in Vietnam by taking a closer look at the potential factors that might affect people’s attitudes, particularly media consumers. The research took a quantitative approach using an online survey form to measure the public’s attitudes on various aspects. The collected data were analyzed in association with Cultivation theory, public opinion polarization phenomenon, and Celebrity culture to find the relationships between personal as well as social factors of Vietnamese citizens and how they might perceive misconducts committed by canceled public figures. Furthermore, this study also considered the influences from Vietnam’s unique socio-political setting to provide an in-depth perspective on the matter.