The Wisdom of the Crowd: Understanding Online Personal Privacy in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam Patrick E. Sharbaugh Abstract With more than 30 percent of the world’s population now connected to the Internet, online personal privacy has become a top concern among citizens of many nations and regions, and it has become clear that attitudes about and conceptions of online privacy represent a nexus of significant change in the construction of culture, society, and citizenship. These attitudes and conceptions may differ significantly across national borders, therefore examining different notions of privacy may better enable us to understand the changes underway. Using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, this researcher undertook an exploratory study into two research questions: 1) How do Internet users in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam understand and conceive of online personal privacy?, and 2) How concerned are they about personal privacy on the Internet? Rather than imposing Western definitions of privacy on local respondents, this study attempted to infer a conception of Vietnamese privacy values and parameters from responses using methods designed to avoid priming respondents with non-local perceptions of the research topic. The results reveal a more complex conception of personal privacy than those predicted for Vietnam by Hofstede’s dimensions of national culture, and one that differs significantly from traditional Western conceptions. In Vietnam, privacy appears to be chiefly understood as a means of safeguarding valuable personal data on the Internet from dangerous individuals who seek to obtain it for malign purposes, rather than a fundamental right, an inviolable aspect of self, or a claim by individuals to be left alone and free from surveillance. Vietnamese appear unconcerned about governmental or organizational scrutiny, and seem to have little regard for privacy policies or regulations. In this, the Vietnamese conception of online privacy appears to depart significantly from longstanding notions of privacy that have informed discourse, social practice, regulatory efforts and citizenship in the Western hemisphere for more than a century and which continue to influence current debates and policy decisions. Key Words: Internet, Privacy, Vietnam, Hofstede, collectivism, online, Asia, identity, autonomy, SNS, citizenship. ***** 1. Introduction Privacy-related news, surveys, and policy debates seems to make headlines on a daily basis in the developed nations of the Western hemisphere. Yet in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, where more than 30% of this developing nation’s 90 million residents are online, many of them using Web-connected smartphones and social network platforms such as Facebook, Twitter,
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Wisdom of the Crowd - Understanding Online Personal Privacy in Vietnam
In Vietnam, privacy appears to be chiefly understood as a means of safeguarding valuable personal data on the Internet from dangerous individuals who seek to obtain it for malign purposes, rather than a fundamental right, an inviolable aspect of self, or a claim by individuals to be left alone and free from surveillance. Vietnamese appear unconcerned about governmental or organizational scrutiny, and seem to have little regard for privacy policies or regulations. In this, the Vietnamese conception of online privacy appears to depart significantly from longstanding notions of privacy that have informed discourse, social practice, regulatory efforts and citizenship in the Western hemisphere for more than a century and which continue to influence current debates and policy decisions.
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The Wisdom of the Crowd: Understanding Online Personal Privacy
in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam
Patrick E. Sharbaugh
Abstract
With more than 30 percent of the world’s population now connected to the Internet, online
personal privacy has become a top concern among citizens of many nations and regions, and it
has become clear that attitudes about and conceptions of online privacy represent a nexus of
significant change in the construction of culture, society, and citizenship. These attitudes and
conceptions may differ significantly across national borders, therefore examining different
notions of privacy may better enable us to understand the changes underway.
Using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, this researcher undertook an
exploratory study into two research questions: 1) How do Internet users in the Socialist Republic
of Vietnam understand and conceive of online personal privacy?, and 2) How concerned are
they about personal privacy on the Internet? Rather than imposing Western definitions of
privacy on local respondents, this study attempted to infer a conception of Vietnamese privacy
values and parameters from responses using methods designed to avoid priming respondents
with non-local perceptions of the research topic.
The results reveal a more complex conception of personal privacy than those predicted for
Vietnam by Hofstede’s dimensions of national culture, and one that differs significantly from
traditional Western conceptions. In Vietnam, privacy appears to be chiefly understood as a
means of safeguarding valuable personal data on the Internet from dangerous individuals who
seek to obtain it for malign purposes, rather than a fundamental right, an inviolable aspect of
self, or a claim by individuals to be left alone and free from surveillance. Vietnamese appear
unconcerned about governmental or organizational scrutiny, and seem to have little regard for
privacy policies or regulations. In this, the Vietnamese conception of online privacy appears to
depart significantly from longstanding notions of privacy that have informed discourse, social
practice, regulatory efforts and citizenship in the Western hemisphere for more than a century
and which continue to influence current debates and policy decisions.
information privacy, but such was not found to be the case – at least regarding individuals, as
contrasted with groups.
A low Individualism (IDV) dimension, as in Vietnam (20), should mean that individuals would
exhibit markedly lower levels of concern for privacy. Yet, again, Vietnamese respondents were
highly protective of online personal privacy from other individuals.
Vietnam’s Masculinity (MAS) score of 40 indicates that individuals there tend to place
significant emphasis on material success, and that the economic benefits of using private
information should tend to outweigh the benefits of privacy control. Yet controlling against the
misuse of personal data online was widely viewed as critical.
Only in the case of Power Distance do the observed results fall along predicted lines. Vietnam
has a high Power Distance score of 70. Individuals in high PDI countries are expected to exhibit
higher levels of privacy concerns. Insofar as personal information security is concerned, in this
regard the observed results did meet expectations.
Yet the respondents’ relative comfort with institutional scrutiny tells a more complex and
nuanced tale than is revealed by attitudes toward sharing of information with other individuals.
That is, if we consider only attitudes toward group and organizational surveillance, then privacy
attitudes would seem to track much more closely with those predicted. In other words,
depending upon the conception of privacy we utilize – weighted toward individuals or groups,
scrutiny or appropriation – the observed results either fit many of those predicted by Hofstede’s
model or they fail them almost entirely.
These results clearly indicate that further research is needed regarding the relationship of
Hofstede’s dimensions of national culture to the complex characterizations of privacy across
national and cultural borders.
Westin and many other scholars and theorists speak of privacy as a right, yet this study
suggests that Vietnamese netizens may view privacy not as a right – that is, as a fundamental
individual entitlement – but rather as a normative behavior, a socially prescribed manner of
preventive action like locking one’s door or brushing one’s teeth, more responsibility than right.
It is not their privacy per se that Vietnamese respondents seem to feel is threatened on the
Internet; it is their wallets and their social capital.
This all suggests that Vietnamese conceptions of privacy may have more in common with
notions of mere personal information and data security than with traditional Western ideals
rooted in identity formation and personal autonomy.
Indeed, although Rachaels has observed that the unique interest protected by privacy is “our
ability to limit other people’s observation of us or access to information about us – even if we
have certain knowledge that the observation or information would not be used to our detriment
or used at all” 89
[italics mine], concerns about the potential for misuse of information would
seem to characterize Vietnamese conceptions of privacy almost in full. Regarding Laudon’s
formulation, that online privacy is “the claim of individuals to be left alone, free from
surveillance or interference from other individuals or organizations including the state,”90
the
Vietnamese expression of online privacy may best be understood as a curtailed, modified
version of that definition: Privacy in Vietnam is the responsibility of individuals to keep
themselves free from malign interference from other individuals.
Vietnam’s unique history and culture may shed further light on these findings. Vietnam has
only recently initiated free-market economic reforms which include private ownership, the
accumulation of capital, market competition, and wage labor. From 1954 until the Chinese-style
economic reforms of doi moi in 1989, Vietnam was among the poorest countries in the world, a
closed communist state in which the government oversaw the production and distribution of all
goods and services, and economic activity of any kind was proscribed. Today, tens of millions of
Vietnamese entrepreneurs are seeking to make up for lost time by engaging in a kind of
“turbocharged capitalism” in which capital, and the means of acquiring it, have become a
single-minded obsession for Vietnamese people. Ironically, it sometimes seems as if every
aspect of modern individual life in Vietnam has come to be ruled by this obsession, where
money is not only a means of providing for oneself and one’s family, it is an end in itself:
establishing status in a hierarchy-gripped culture and providing a safety net in a society in which
less than 20% of the population has a bank account and the notion of insurance is viewed with
deep scepticism.
Vietnam has very little established civil society, and, as in many developing nations, the
government and private industry are awash in institutionalized corruption. At the same time,
state resources for enforcing laws, policing the online environment, and prosecuting
malefactors are only a fraction of what is warranted by the amount of activity on the Internet.
As a result, criminal and illegitimate activity, online and off, is rampant, and citizens are
commensurately more sensitive to the possibility of becoming a victim of such activity than in
other developed countries with tighter oversight and regulatory controls.
As has been noted, Confucian-oriented societies such as Vietnam tend to be characterized by
strong hierarchical systems, with the government and its officials at the very top, and individual
citizens at the bottom. An individual’s placement in the vast territory between those two poles
depends on many factors, but in general terms, the more influence an individual has, the more
power (and, usually, wealth) he has. This is not much different from many capitalist societies,
but there is a significant difference in Vietnam: the more power one has in society, the more
rights one is also perceived to have. (This relationship is precisely what is represented by
Hofstede’s Power Distance dimension).
It is therefore a common belief among Vietnamese that ordinary individuals are, by default,
powerless, disenfranchised, and outside the system. Laws and other regulatory systems that
might appear to exist for the benefit of every citizen are in fact available only to those influential
persons who can manipulate the system to their benefit. Considered through this lens, it is
unsurprising that respondents (among whom there were no government officials, no
celebrities, no oil titans or media moguls) typically felt that privacy-related laws and policies
existed only for the benefit of a select elite, as inaccessible to ordinary Vietnamese as a Lexus or
a fashion model girlfriend.
The Vietnamese worldview also places the government in a paternalistic position in society,
very much like a parent who must be trusted to take care of its children, the citizens. While
personal liberty and autonomy are very important to American and European Internet users,
Vietnamese users are much more tolerant of, even receptive to, greater intrusion and scrutiny
by the government and corporate entities into their personal lives and affairs online. As
Hofstede has noted, cultural dimensions such as collectivism and power distance can affect the
standards of privacy rights. The notion of online surveillance or intrusion by the government, or
even by online businesses and other organizations, may not be considered a violation of privacy
because, for Vietnamese, such actions are to be expected and even sanctioned in the name of
collectivism, citizenship, Confucian values, and national economic development.
Notes
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