The Internet and the Grassroots Foundation of Civil Society in Indochina

Abstract

It is widely believed that the social contract, credited to Magna Carta of Englandin the 13th century and subsequent thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, JohnLocke, is the major factor that has empowered the concept of civil society in theworld, starting from the West. This perspective paper suggests that althoughthat still holds to a large extent, the case of Indochina shows a diametrical, andunnatural, difference as civic engagement in social matters of deep influence wasborn out of the state’s necessity to tolerate diverging voices, either bycontrolling, empowering or engaging, in order to cope with social conflicts. Thisobservation gives rise to the need for further studies on the nature of theinformation-power nexus in the age of big data and social networks.