YVONNE EPPS WRITES — In a perfect world, there would be depth to the concept of press freedom in Vietnam. Unfortunately, all they have now is a shallow kiddy pool that is severely monitored by ‘helicopter’ parents. The issue is becoming much more complicated as the party is finding more…
Category: Vietnam
VIETNAM: Will Sell Site for Laughs
YVONNE EPPS WRITES — From the moment you open Tumblr, 4chan, or Reddit, you’re laughing up a storm. We’re lucky that this is all in English for the American audience, but Vietnam isn’t far behind with their own growing chuckle site. The popular start-up site HaiVL was allegedly acquired by…
VIETNAM: Uncovering the Undercover
YVONNE EPPS WRITES — Vietnam treating their journalists poorly isn’t even a punchline anymore. In the past year, we’ve seen them wage war against journalists and bloggers, detaining, silencing, and playing jail tetris with them. It’s about time someone went undercover. Shawn W. Crispin from the Committee to Protect Journalists…
VIETNAM: Major Mobile Media Takeover
ALEX QUEJADO WRITES — Where do we look for new media information, and what medium do we use to find it? Have traditional media outlets—newspapers, radio, and television—lost their prominence? With the rise of mobile devices, this seems to be the case in Southeast Asia, and most notably in Vietnam.…
VIETNAM: Soft Light Illuminates Faces Behind Bars
YVONNE EPPS WRITES—No one, it seems, can escape the far-reaching grasp of the Internet. Vietnamese authorities thought they could lock away dissidents, but their fingers keep tapping and a scene emerges that looks eerily similar to African Americans during the 1960s Civil Rights era. According to TuoiTreNews, it’s now apparent that prisoners have…
VIETNAM: The News Rap Battle of the Century!
YVONNE EPPS WRITES — Let’s face it; as someone who falls in the 13-25 age range, some of the only ways I stay informed about world events is through the Facebook trending tags and reblogs on Tumblr. A Vietnamese news venue has taken notice and approached the problem with a…
VIETNAM: Potential ‘Senpai’ or Ally?
YVONNE EPPS WRITES— A month has passed since the fiasco in the South China Sea, but it seems that Vietnam has garnered the admiration of another East Asian country. Watch out Vietnam, it seems like ‘senpai’ has noticed you. Major Japanese TV stations like NHK, TBS and Fuji relayed their…
VIETNAM: The Biggest Bully of the South China Sea
YVONNE EPPS WRITES — Tensions over the South China Sea reached its peak last week, but this kerfuffle between China and Vietnam is quite different than the tug of war over the Parcel Islands earlier this year. Everyone wants a piece of this pie, but who loses in the end?…
VIETNAM: The Silent, Fine Line
YVONNE EPPS WRITES — Vietnam’s media has a track record for jailing every person it does not like, but what happens when it fines one of its own state-run newspapers? Looks like this double-edged sword has finally drawn blood. Recently, the Associated Press found that the government fined the state-run newspaper…
POVERTY PROJECT: Measuring Inequality, How Asia Stacks Up
AUSTIN SZABO WRITES: When you want to know the economics of a country, you usually look at its gross domestic product — the amount of wealth it produced over the course of a year. But GDP tells only part of the story; it leaves out how the wealth is distributed.…
VIETNAM: Flap Your Way Into a Lawsuit Pipe
YVONNE EPPS WRITES — Ah, Flappy Bird. You’ve soared into the mainstream’s heart as millions potentially tapped holes into their iOS and Android devices, driven by addiction. You may not flap anymore, but your existence and death is a good sign within Vietnam’s constrictive media. The Vietnamese-developed mobile game Flappy…
VIETNAM: Relationship Status with the UN — It’s Complicated
YVONNE EPPS WRITES — We’re already familiar with Vietnam’s war on peaceful protest and “Internet dissent.” But really: Is it wise to attack a journalist en route to a UN human rights review? Vietnamese authorities kept independent journalist, civil society advocate and prospective UN speaker Pham Chi Dung from leaving…
VIETNAM: Paracel Islands for the Silenced People
YVONNE EPPS WRITES — It’s a new year and with Tet rounding the final corner, Vietnam can finally turn over a new leaf. Or it can indulge in more media constriction, give or take. This week marked the 40th anniversary of China’s invasion of Vietnam and its taking of the…
VIETNAM: Guerrilla Warefare on the Internet
YVONNE EPPS WRITES- Just when you thought things couldn’t get worse, they just did. Vietnam’s war on peaceful protest has reached guerrilla warfare of the monetary kind. Hey, Uy’s atrocities were unforgivable, so why not take the rest of the Internet down, right? Two decrees have been posed against social…
VIETNAM: The Human Rights War Continues! Article 258 Strikes Again
YVONNE EPPS WRITES — The results are in and, what do you know? Vietnam isn’t stepping forward to receive the award for Most Hypocritical Media Censorship! I’m sorry Mama Dinh; we really tried our best. Blogger activist, Dinh Nhat Uy, was given a 15-month suspended sentence and home arrest along…
VIETNAM: The Article 258 and Human Rights War
YVONNE EPPS WRITES- It’s Throwback Thursday and, while other people are throwing back to their embarrassing baby pictures, one mother throws back to the summer where she lost her two sons to Article 258. The mother of arrested blogger, Dinh Nhat Uy, is urging several media outlets, including Voice of…