COMM2383 Asian Cybercultures

Final Group Project - Vinaleaks

Students: Luu Binh s3345544 Huynh Nhu Suong s3246644 Lecturer: Patrick Sharbaugh Submission date: 16 May 2011

Table of Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 3 Content and interface .............................................................................................................. 3 Main page .............................................................................................................................................. 3 Content page ........................................................................................................................................ 4 Submission page ................................................................................................................................. 4 Detailed description .......................................................................................................................... 8 Implications ................................................................................................................................ 9 Vinaleaks as Alternative media .................................................................................................... 9 Vinaleaks and Mass collaboration ............................................................................................ 10 Vinaleaks and the Internet Censorship .................................................................................. 11 Vinaleaks and Identity................................................................................................................... 13 Vinaleaks and Transparency ...................................................................................................... 15 Limitations ............................................................................................................................... 17 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................ 19

Introduction
Vinaleaks is introduced as alternative news medium that provides online space for Vietnamese virtual community freely contributing and discussing on certain topics that have not been mentioned in mainstream media. Vina stands for Vietnam and leaks are secrets that have not been discussed in daily face-to-face life; but now are available on Vinaleaks. This mass collaborative site welcomes all Vietnamese Internet users to produce and consume news that are concerned the most in publics interests including politics (in legal way), society and business. This is funded nongovernment and non-profit-organization inside Vietnam. The site expects to create a virtual community where the voiceless individual can raise his or her voice.

Content and interface

Vinaleaks is designed simply with two interfaces: main page and content pages. The reason for this simple interface is that Vinaleaks is an online news site, so it must keep professional and simple. In turn, it is easy for viewers to use. Moreover, for users who use mobile phone and other devices can easily access and participate in the site. The website address can be proposed as http://vinaleaks.org/.

Main page
First part is the name of the website (Vinaleaks) and the logo of the website. Both of these things will be on the top left of the site. Under the name and the logo is the second part which will include a little text box with the number of viewers today, the numbers of members are now accessing in this page.

Under this little box is a calendar which can help users to find news on a certain by clicking on that days and all news will be listed in content pages. At the middle and right hand side of the page has third, fourth and fifth parts. The third part has four tabs which will link to content pages including Home, About Us, Read this first and Contact. The fourth part is a box contains extremely hot news that has the highest ratings divided into weeks and months. The final part is also a box containing a list of news' tittles that has been published.

Content page
The overall interface is the same with main page except the second part, and the last three parts. Under the name and logo also have two small boxes, but one is TAGS box and one is calendar. TAGS box is where users can find related news with some key words that can be found in news. The rest of the page includes tittles and contents of the news, below is ratings part and comment boxes.

Submission page
This page has 4 main parts like Tittle, Content, Tags and Sources (if they have).

MAIN PAGE
Username Sign up? Search Password

Home

About us

Read this first

Contact

Logo

Extremely HOT

Month

Week

Viewers: xxxxx Members online: xxxx Total members: xxxxx CALENDAR 2011

NEWS

CONTENT PAGE
Welcome: Binh, Luu 01:14 AM, 15 May 2011 Settings Log out
Submission

Search

Home

About us

Read this first

Contact

Logo
TAGS
Regulation

TITTLE
Author, Date

CONTENTS

politicVietnam
corruption banned
determination

law

Related News: TITTLES TITTLES Ratings now are:

CALENDAR 2011

Ratings: Comment:

SUBMISSION PAGE
Welcome: Binh, Luu 01:50 AM, 15 May 2011 Settings Log out
Submission

Search

Home

About us

Read this first

Contact

Logo
TAGS
CALENDAR 2011

Tittle Content

Tags

Sources

Submit

Cancel

Detailed description
Home: Every time we click on Home button, it will lead us to the main page. About us: Users can find more information about Vinaleaks when they click on this tab. Read this first: This is all about the regulations of Vinaleaks. Generally, users can find which information they can discuss and submit to the site. Additionally, this can make sure that users cannot complain Vinaleaks when their news will not be published if they offend regulations. Contact: Users can find Vinaleaks contact information here. Search: When users type any keywords in the search box, they will receive results which are news related to the keywords. Settings: This section allows members to share personal information and this must be truth because Vinaleaks need to contact them if we need. Furthermore, Vinaleaks commit those information will be kept in secret. Submission: This button only appears on the site when members log in their accounts. It will lead members to submission page where they can begin writing news. Additionally, after clicking the submit button, they have to wait for approval from administrators to check whether they break Vinaleaks regulations.

Implications
Vinaleaks as Alternative media
Alternative media including newspapers, websites, radio and television, etc. in the 21st century plays a vital role in serving public interests. It aims to publish local stories that mainstream media does not touch. Furthermore, those stories must match with audiences needs and interests. Thus, Vinaleaks is a kind of alternative media where the Internet users can find hot news and satisfy with their curiosity and demands of information. Dislike mainstream news media, alternative news media focuses on subjective news that the contributors can freely express their own opinions and raise their voice. In fact, alternative media is seen as part of civil society and can be considered the third voice between state media and private commercial media (Servaes 1999, cited in Bailey, Cammaerts & Carpentier 2008, p.23). Completely discover is the main philosophy that Vinaleaks will bring to its audiences, while official newspapers and official online news sites sometimes publish a news which often end with an open conclusion always makes readers are angry and curious. Yet, Internet users can find the truth and news without managing of Vietnamese government in Vinaleaks. This means the site is going to strengthen the public sphere or public spaces. It potentially goes beyond the local or national context and construct translocal [...] (counter-)public spaces (Bailey et al. 2008, p.97). Furthermore, alternative news media is where the publics (the Internet users) are actors and actresses that create medium (Vinaleaks) organized

themselves (Bailey et al. 2008). But, it is partially true for this project due to the fact that content must be considerably concerned about Internet censorship in Vietnam. The project will be introducing to Vietnamese virtual community the existence of alternative news media among the mainstream one. Afterwards, it will be helping them to get familiar with the site. Vinaleaks can be observed as the revolution of news media in Vietnamese cyberspace. This is where voiceless individuals can raise their thoughts, interpret and discuss news with other users. In turn, Vinaleaks is going to raise attention among Vietnamese Internet users, especially aim to increase online readers awareness of alternative media in general. Deep understanding about Vinaleaks will probably motivate them participate in and encourage them to contribute their own news to give a hand in the projects development.

Vinaleaks and Mass collaboration

This free contribution leads to the concept of mass collaboration. In which, mass collaboration in cyberspace is the encouragement of the innovation, coordination, involvement and contribution of online participants in the operational process in a website (Tapscott & Williams 2007). Vinaleaks welcomes the participation of Vietnamese virtual community. Everyone registers and joins in Vinaleaks has freedom of speech. They can produce news and also can consume news from other users. This connects to the idea of prosumer that a user plays both roles as a producer and a consumer (Jenkins 2006). As producers, they can produce news in Vinaleaks and all news will be checking in order to avoid some censored contents. This means that Vinaleaks is seen as mass collaborative virtual environment. It is

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organized without organization (Shirky 2008). As consumers, it is obvious that they can consume provided information and they also can give feedbacks, opinions, different thoughts, comments and even can correct the news. Of course, each contribution to the site of consumers will be checked to not mention about censored issues. The project will be introducing the innovation and development of web2.0 that mostly presents the mass collaborative function to Internet users. It enhances characteristics of alternative news media where users feel like they are part of Vinaleaks owners due to the system of organizing without organization (Shirky 2008). In Vinaleaks, each user has equal rights to speak up and give thought, so it can help to build a large virtual community where they feel free to talk and they no longer worry about finding someone to discuss with them. On the other hands, Vinaleaks helps audiences to define the difference between its site and others like blogs. It provides a mass collaborative site to encourage users to express their ideas and bring their news to the public. So, users can learn how to write news differently from writing blogs. For instance, as writing a blog, users express their emotion and feeling about their personal life, but Vinaleaks encourages users to comment on public's issues in an ethical way.

Vinaleaks and the Internet Censorship

Although Vinaleaks is where users can find opportunities to express their freedom of speech. However, it relates to the concept of Internet censorship in Vietnam. This means Vinaleaks makes sure that news contents must not be relevant to some

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censored contents according to Vietnam regulations. All contents should be welcomed, but in order not to mention about censored contents which considerably harm to Vietnamese politics and government, news will be checked carefully before it is going to be published on Vinaleaks. According to online content censorship in Vietnam, some issues related to politic are not allowed to be discussed such as some contents oppose the government of Socialist Republic of Vietnam; endanger national security, stability, public safety; disrupt the united harmony of the people; propagate war; create hatred, conflicts between minority groups, religious groups; provoke violence, pornography, crimes, social unrest, stereotypes; impair cultural values; call for illegal demonstrations, boycotts, unlawful gatherings for grievances and complaints (Viet Tan 2011). The quote is the exact content of the regulation that is posted by Viet Tan organization; however, the site is denied to access maybe due to the fact that Vietnamese government does not publish this content widely on cyberspace. Nevertheless, by using back door tool like Ultra surf software, users can easy access in this site. Although the government has censored some contents, it is not strict enough. As a result, in order not to break the regulation, Vinaleaks will say NO to censored content. Additionally, in Vinaleaks, Western viewpoints about certain topics will not be encouraged due to Internet censorship in Vietnam. Furthermore, Vinaleaks also does not allow other countries virtual community participation. It helps all contribution and discussion on Vinaleaks forced to Asian values in general.

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Moreover, according to Karl Marx, ideology is the system of beliefs that people learn from society about the world and the place in it (Berger 2005).Besides, Gramsci (cited by Berger 2005) asserted that there are competing ideologies which are operating in every culture cannot be reduced by economic relations. Hence, users in the West and the East, particularly in Asia will have different viewpoints, so opinions from two different ideological perspectives somehow go against the others.

Vinaleaks and Identity

Vietnam is a country where government pays a very strict attention on their censorship. For example, Vietnamese people always have to support for the socialist regime. If they believe and support for other systems such as the capitalism, they may face a big trouble. Therefore, it is too hard for an individual to find a space and freely express their opinions about sensitive and political issues in the real life. As a result, some people may hire their real identity or true self, defined by characteristics, beliefs, feelings and genders (Smith 2008) and create fake identities which according to Turkle (1995) are the "constructed personas" in virtual life and are the sum of multiple distributed personas. Hence, "the relative anonymity of life" on cyberspace gives individuals an opportunity to be more comfortable to express themselves (Turkle 1999). Consequently, Vinaleaks is established on the purpose to help Vietnamese people to "act out unresolved conflicts, to play and replay characterological difficulties a new and exotic stage" (Turkle 1999, p.644). Vinaleaks motivates people to say and to do things that they cannot say and do in their face-toface world. According to Chandler (1998), the website is the medium which has an ability for people to present their desires in everyday life. In other words, Vinaleaks 13

can help Vietnamese people to understand more about themselves including their characteristics, their beliefs and opinions about a particular issue so that they can prepare for their real identities if one day, the Vietnamese social system becomes more democratic. Additionally, according to Suler (2004) the high level of less inhibited which supports people to express themselves more openly is decided by six factors regarding dissociative anonymity (you don't know me), invisibility (you can't see me) and minimization of authority (we're equals). Once people have an opportunity to set up their online identities and edit them, the information will not reflect much about them. It is because what other people know about an online person is the information of that person wants them to know. Thus, online users can "separate their action online from their in person life style and identity" (Suler 2004). Additionally, invisible is the ability to hire other people so that others cannot see what a user is doing on a website. As a result, users will be willing to share everything differently from the face-to-face life. Thus, in our Vinaleaks website, we will let participants to have their confidentiality and invisible option in order to monitor their personal information and ensure that they can feel safe when others cannot see them if they visit our website. Finally, the most important factor that will make people invulnerable and more comfortable to access into Vinaleaks is minimizing authority. While Vietnamese people may scare to express their offline status and beliefs due to the authority's threats, in cyberspace everyone has equal rights to raise their voice. The point is that Vinaleaks will provide people a place to discuss with each other when all of them play as the same role. Consequently, 14

people will feel that they are sharing their ideas with their friends and they will be willing to "speak out".

Vinaleaks and Transparency

According to Acton (1887), "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" (cited by Hanna, Talley & Guindon 2000). Therefore, this is a reason why Vietnamese residents have a right to see what really happens in the other side of the government. The belief is that government and administration' operation is a transparent system for publics to scrutinize. However, transparency somehow is limited due to the fact that Vinaleaks avoids mentioning censored contents. Consequently, Vinaleaks will apply all of three kinds of the transparency including the informational transparency, participatory transparency and accountability transparency (Balkin 1999). Firstly, in the informational transparency level, Vinaleaks will give participants opportunities to not only acknowledge about both government's actions and decisions but also to access to the other sides of political issues and transparency in businesses and society. By this, Vinaleaks wants to prove the arguments of Don Tapscott are true "you can't hide anything anymore" and "secrecy is dying. It's probably already dead" (Thompson 2011). Secondly, via Vinaleaks, online users can participate in the process of political decisions by raising their opinions about particular issues, while it is very hard in their face-to-face life. Hence, Vinaleaks' users "become working partner" with Vinaleaks website so that they can contribute to build a more democratic in Vietnam (Thompson 2011). Finally, Vinaleaks will

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play a role as an official accountability website to the secret sides of the governmental policies like sometimes the government want to hide some news and they do not want those news be published, for example the embezzlement and corruption. Although the advantages of the Vinaleaks can help Vietnamese residents to raise their voice in any political issues, Vinaleaks may also face big challenges. Vietnam has a socialism system where government is the most dominant group in the society. In fact it is true to say the Vietnamese political system has been absolutely corrupted. Consequently, it is a little bit hard to make the Vinaleaks exist in Vietnam. This situation is similar with the forbiddance of Google in China. Besides, one of the rule of Vietnamese law is if residents cannot have opinions or arguments against the leadership of the party, they will be accused of high treason. The rule will harm administrators of Vinaleaks unless they have power in the society. As a result, the content of information on the website may be biased when its administrators are from official background. After all, transparency seems to be the good reason for launching Vinaleaks where government secret (the legal one), business and societys issues influence on the public will be published. People need a third party to show them the other sides of political issues. From political side, if the government does not do anything wrong, they cannot be affected by the Vinaleaks website so they do not need to afraid of. As a result, the establishment of the website will open the democratic door of Vietnam

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country. From social and business sides, transparency only means to them that everything must be clear to the public.

Limitations
The first limitation is the ideology of Vietnamese people. Western countries, like USA, follow the capitalism system. Therefore, the growth of western societies always respects the democracy of their residents. Western people believe that their government is their employees so that residents have the rights to be informed and discuss about their government's decisions, to discover the truth and to check on the government (Siebert, Peterson & Schramm 1956). In contrast, from the

beginning of Independent Vietnam, socialism has created the ideology of supporting and advancing the policies of government and contributing to the success and continuance of the socialist party (Siebert, Peterson & Schramm 1956). As a result, it becomes dependent habits of Vietnam residents when some of them may believe that everything the government do is good for them. On the other hand, in fact, not all Vietnamese people support the monitoring way of their government. Some Vietnamese residents may be against this corruption system. However, they may not confidently raise their voice on Vinaleaks due to the confidential reasons and powerlessness. They are afraid that the third parties will know their physical identity and they will be in danger. As a result, Vinaleaks has to ensure with their participants about their confidential rights and assert the benefit of democracy to Vietnamese people.

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The establishment of Vinaleaks will be absolutely against by the Vietnamese government. Vietnamese government may state that the content of Vinaleaks will cause conflicts and civil wars between government and Vietnamese residents. And that will go against the ideology of socialism system. Besides, the government may also say that contradict beliefs between online groups of users will cause uprisings and demonstrations within the nation. Consequently, to avoid these conflicts, before posting the information on Vinaleaks, the websites administrators will check the contents in order to avoid sensitive topics and unacceptable languages. The last limitation of the website is that the contents of information may not have a high level of reliability. In order to protect the confidential rights of participants, Vinaleaks has to keep their personal information in secret. However, this will cause the lack of evidences which will prove the authenticity of the information. There are two solutions for this problem. Firstly, the reliability of the information will decide by the rating of the source, so the more participants enjoys in Vinaleaks, the more reliable the website is. Secondly, Vinaleaks must always be transparent to their participants so that it can assert itself as a high level reliable website. The more participants trust the website, the more reliable the sources are.

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REFERENCES
Bailey, O. G, Cammaerts, B & Carpentier, N 2008, Understanding Alternative Media, McGraw-Hill, US. Balkin, J 1999, 'How Mass Media Simulate Political Transparency', Cultural Values, vol.3, no.4, pp.393-413. Chandler, D 1998, Personal Home Pages and the Construction of Identities on the Web, Perspectives in theory and practice, viewed 14 May 2011, <http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/webident.html>. Decision by the Hanoi Peoples Committee to monitor internet users 2010, Viet Tan, 4 June, viewed 12 May 2011, <http://www.viettan.org/spip.php?article9859>. Hanna, F, Talley, W & Guindon, M 2000, 'The Power of Perception: Toward a Model of Cultural Oppression and Liberation', Journal of Counseling & Development, vol. 78, no.4, pp.430-441. Jenkins, H2006, Introduction: Worship at the Altar of Convergence. A New Paradigm for Understanding Media Change, in Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, New York: New York University Press, pp. 1 -24. Shirky, C 2008, Here comes everybody: the power of organizing without organizations, Penguin Press, New York. Siebert, S, Peterson, T &Schramm 1956, Fourtheories of the Press, University of Illinois Press. Smith, M 2008, True self in daily life, trc.virginia.edu, viewed 14 May 2011 <http://trc.virginia.edu/Publications/Diversity/I_Characteristics.htm>. Suler, J 2004, The Online Disinhibition Effect, Cyber Psychology & Behavior, vol.7, no.3, pp.321-326.

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Tapscott, D & Williams A. D 2007, Wikinomics How Mass Collaboration changes everything, New York. Thompson, C 2007, 'The See- Through CEO', WIRED Magazine, March, viewed 12 May 2011, <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/wired40_ceo.html>. Turkle, S 1995, Life on the screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, 1st edn, New York: Simon & Schuster. Turkle, S 1999, 'Looking Toward Cyberspace: Beyond Grounded Sociology, Cyberspace and Identity', Contemporary Sociology, vol.28, no.6, pp.643-648.

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