Tuyển tập Hội nghị Khoa học thường niên năm 2024. ISBN: 978-604-82-8175-5
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REPRESENTATIONS OF CULTURAL INTOLERANCE IN
VIETNAMESE FACEBOOK SOCIAL GROUPS
Lam Thi Lan Huong
Thuyloi University, email: lamhuong@tlu.edu.vn
1. INTRODUCTION
Humanity has benefited more from
developments in online social networks and
Internet technologies. However, the
unfavorable aspect of this development has
made cultural intolerance more prevalent and
potent threats on a global scale. Cultural
intolerance consists of any idea, action,
policy, or social structure that views people
unfairly because of their membership in a
group (Baldwin et al., 2014). Cultural
intolerance is represented in a variety of types
such as cognition, attribution, stereotypes,
prejudice, behaviour, and policy and social
structure. Cultural intolerance happens not
only after a shocking incident or trigger event
but also in normal situations in cyberspace.
Vietnam is currently one of the top ten
countries with the most active Facebook users
in the world with about 66.2 million users,
ranked number seven (Quang Huy, 2023). It
can be seen that Facebook is no longer simply
a means of conveying information and
contacting each other but also an effective tool
in spreading cultural products, preserving
traditional, creative and popular cultural
values, and transforming new cultural values.
The benefits and positive impacts that
Facebook bring are undeniable. However,
along with good values, many negative sides
and problems from social groups in Facebook
appear. Among them, what is alarming is the
deterioration of morality, deviations from
standards in online behavior culture and even
taking advantage of social networks
intentionally or unintentionally to express
intolerance towards others in cyberspace.
2. METHODOLOGY
This paper looked at the representations of
cultural intolerance in Vietnam social
networks from three perspectives:
stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination as
specified in Baldwin et al. (2014). Content
analysis was used to examine the author’s
Facebook page, which includes a variety of
social groups. To ensure the objectivity of the
results, each day the author examined one
post of a social group page that appeared
randomly in her new feeds. Due to time
limits, this content analysis was done within
only a week.
3. RESULTS
The content analysis of random social
groups in Facebook in a limited time of one
week revealed a frequent representation of
stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination in
social groups.
First of all, Facebook users tend to have a
lot of stereotypes towards others in
cyberspace. Stereotypes are the simplistic
views a person has about others because
he/she believes they share the traits of a
particular group (Lustig & Koester, 2010).
People often generalise about others and
exaggerate their traits without taking into
account their unique qualities. The
stereotyped group are usually considered as
not nice, wrong, inferior or unimportant. In
Facebook social networks, stereotypes often
originate from: regions of the world (e.g.
Arabs or Africans), regions within countries
(e.g., Northern/Southern Vietnamese), cities
Tuyển tập Hội nghị Khoa học thường niên năm 2024. ISBN: 978-604-82-8175-5
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(e.g., Hanoians, Saigoners), cultures (e.g.,
H’Mong people, Kinh people), religion (e.g.,
Hindu, Muslim, Islamic), occupations (e.g.,
policemen, singers, nuns), or physical
characteristics (e.g., short, blond-haired,
tatoo). Figure 1 shows stereotyped comments
of Vietnamese Facebookers when watching a
clip in which a white blonde said to her
boyfriend that the moon was bigger than the
Earth. This stereotype originates from the
belief that white girls with blone hair are
naturally not intelligent, therefore they often
say stupid things.
Figure 1. Stereotypes about physical
characteristics
Secondly, Facebook users tend to show
prejudice against others in its social groups.
Prejudice is defined as “an attitude in which
we are hostile towards or avoid another person
because of the group to which that person
belong” (Allport, 1979, p.7, quoted in
Baldwin et al., 2014, p.119). Prejudice
happens when Internet users show negative
attitudes (i.e., dislike, hatred) and readiness to
behave in unfair ways toward other people
based on incorrect and inflexible stereotypes.
Figure 2 shows mocking comments and
hostile attitude towards Indian visitors coming
to Vietnam. The first comment scoffed the
eating habit of Indian. It implied eating by
hand was dirty, which despised the tradition of
Indian people. The second comments showed
the hatred and unfair behaviour to these Indian
visitors by using disrepectful words such as
thằng Đú Ận or né gấp.
Figure 2. Prejudice against Indian
groups of tourists to Vietnam
The most frequent representation of
discrimination in Facebook social group is
racism. Racism is the inclination to group
individuals from various ethnic backgrounds
according to physical characteristics such
skin tone, hair color, texture, facial structure,
and eye shapes (Baldwin et al., 2014). In
Facebook social groups, users often present a
variety of acts of racism such as arms-length,
redneck, and ethnophaulism. When someone
openly disparages other groups, they perform
redneck racism. Figure 3 illustrates redneck
racism about the same case of groups of
Indian tourists to Vietnam. The Indian
tourists receives a great number of racist
words from Vietnamese Facebookers, for
example, lũ ấn độ, lũ mọi rợ khốn nạn súc
sinh, lừa lọc tồi tệ nhất thế giới. These racist
words may influence other Vietnamese
people’s opinion, leading them to think
negatively towards Indian people.
Figure 3. Redneck racism towards
Indian tourists
Facebook users also commit ethnophaulism
when they make racist remarks or jokes with
the intention of demeaning or harming people
from different tribes (Baldwin et al., 2014).
Figures 4 provides some examples of racist
jokes about the case of an Angola boy visiting
Vietnam. The first comment sneered this
Tuyển tập Hội nghị Khoa học thường niên năm 2024. ISBN: 978-604-82-8175-5
555
Angola boy’s black skin by saying that he did
not have to apply suncream or skincare, or
even wash his face, and noone could realize
that. The second comment was a racist joke
when this person prayed the boy’s black skin
would apply to her ex-lover’s wife belly
which meant that her ex-lover’s future baby
would have black skin like this Angola boy.
These racist comments/jokes received a lot of
love (hearts).
Figure 4. Racist remarks or jokes about
others’ skin color
From the above situations, it can be seen
that behavioral culture on social networks has
been and is being overlooked by users. From
the perspective of many users, social
networks are a virtual and anonymous
environment, so Facebookers are not
responsible for their actions. Therefore,
developing culture and being aware of
behavior on social networks are becoming
urgent and require participation from both
organizations and individuals.
To develop a healthy cultural environment
on social networks, it is necessary to orient
and encourage people working in the field of
online culture and arts, who have great
influence on today's youth for example KOLs
(key opinion leaders) to produce, create and
spread valuable and appropriate content. In
Facebook social groups, they contribute to
increasing the beautiful and eliminating the
ugly, turning clean content into the
mainstream in cyberspace.
For uncultured behaviors and deviant
manifestations, it is necessary to have
positive criticism from public opinion,
promoting the role of leaders and
administrators of forums, websites, and fan
clubs. In addition, it is necessary to equip
young people with cultural knowledge about
differences and similiarities. These Internet
users may be more aware of the words they
use, the jokes they tell, or the things they say.
This is a key and long-term solution to
comprehensively improve people's
knowledge about behavior on social
networks, and to create a virtual world which
is more inclusive of others and appreciative
of others’ differences.
4. CONCLUSION
To sum up, the present paper emphasizes
frequent representations of cultural
intolerance in Facebook social groups.
Stereotyping, prejudice, and racism are more
frequently recognized in Facebook pages,
leading to unsuccessful communication and
misunderstandings among people from
different groups. In order to reduce these
intercultural misunderstandings, people need
to develop intercultural competence which
can move beyond stereotyping so as to
respond appropriately to others, encourage
and promote good values of people in general
and in the online community in particular, to
participate and behave civilly in cyberspace.
5. REFERENCES
[1] Baldwin et al. (2014). Intercultural
communication for everyday life. Wiley
Blackwell.
[2] Lustig, M. W., & Koester, J. (2010).
Intercultural competence: Interpersonal
communication across cultures. Pearson.
[3] Quang Huy (2023). Viet Nam trong top
quốc gia sử dụng Facebook và Tiktok
nhiều nhất thế giới. Dantri.com.vn
https://dantri.com.vn/suc-manh-so/viet-nam-
trong-top-quoc-gia-su-dung-facebook-va-tiktok-
nhieu-nhat-the-gioi-20230609004651037.htm.