MASTER’S THESIS

Representation of corruption in Vietnam’s contemporary

mass media: Insights from online news satirical cartoons

by

Ho Manh Tung

ID: 51118011

Supervisor: Prof. Joseph Progler

March 2020

Master’s Thesis Presented to Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Science in Asia Pacific Studies

1
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Acknowledgements

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my parents, my wife, and my daughter for

supporting me during this journey. I am extremely grateful to Prof. Joseph Progler, my

supervisor, and Prof. Vuong Quan Hoang, my mentor, for providing me with invaluable

inspiration, feedback, and guidance. This thesis is also immensely improved due to the

comments of Prof. David Askew, Prof. Kaori Yoshida, and Prof. Peter Mantello. I would also

like to thank Prof. Ho Si Quy, the people of Institute of Philosophy (Vietnam Academy of

Social Sciences), and the people of Centre for Interdisciplinary Social Research (Phenikaa

University) for their continued support and encouragement. Finally, to Ho Manh Toan and

Nguyen Minh Hoang, who accompany me during many sleepless working nights, I am in

your debt.
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Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction .......................................................................................................... 8
Chapter 2: Literature Review ............................................................................................... 11
2.1.Political satire around the world ............................................................................. 11
The West ...................................................................................................................... 12
China............................................................................................................................ 15
The developing world ................................................................................................. 17
2.2. A brief history of the art of satire in Vietnam ...................................................... 19
Chapter 3: Materials and Methods ....................................................................................... 24
3.1. Materials ............................................................................................................... 24
3.2. Methods: A mixed method approach ................................................................. 24
3.3 Four dimensions of political satire’s effects: Activism, Affects, Educational value,
and Social Solidarity ...................................................................................................... 27
Chapter 4: Results and Observations.................................................................................... 33
4.1. Taboos....................................................................................................................... 33
4.2. The use of auxiliary markers .................................................................................. 34
4.3. Stereotypical representation of corruption ................................................................ 36
4.4. The willingness to represent corruption as a systemic problem ......................... 39
4.5. Depicting the people’s struggles and its political implications ............................ 46
4.6. Descriptive statistics of the random sample .......................................................... 48
Chapter 5: Discussion ........................................................................................................... 55
Continuity with the past................................................................................................. 55
The how and why of satirizing systematic corruption ................................................ 57
More tolerant? ............................................................................................................ 57
More cynical? .............................................................................................................. 60
Collective reflection and social solidarity ..................................................................... 61
Chapter 6: Concluding Remarks .......................................................................................... 64
References ............................................................................................................................ 67
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Table 1: Distribution of generic versus individualistic depiction; the presence of auxiliary

markers; the presence of systemic corruption; the presence of traditional motifs; the presence
of international motifs .......................................................................................................... 48
Table 2: Distribution of target categories ............................................................................ 50
Table 3: Distribution of the continuous variables ............................................................... 52
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Figure 1: A 3blues-and-1red model for the rationale to study satirical cartoon in online news
in Vietnam. ............................................................................................................................. 8
Figure 2: An example of the final dataset ............................................................................ 27
Figure 3: Four dimensions of political satire extracted from the literature. ........................ 28
Figure 4: Tuoi Tre Cuoi, no. 185, June 1999 as cited by (Phan, 2003). The editor of a
newspaper points at the portraits of famous people on the wall and remind his artists to not
draw them realistically. ........................................................................................................ 34
Figure 5: Tuoi Tre Cuoi, 2017 December 19. The figure presents a reality show called “Road
to the peak of corruption,” in which the contestants present their failed national projects. . 35
Figure 6: Tuoi Tre Cuoi, 2018 November 8. The figure presents the illusion of punishment
within the political system. An official is punished and get demoted, yet somehow after that,
he arrives at a higher position............................................................................................... 36
Figure 7: Tuoi Tre Cuoi’s Facebook page, 2018 December 19. A government official takes
his son to a fortune-teller. The fortune-teller says it doesn't matter which Chinese Zodiac sign
he is, and he is always the son of a "mandarin." .................................................................. 37
Figure 8: Tuoi Tre Cuoi’s Facebook page, 2018 November 12. The picture depicts the
corrupted officials as rats digging holes and eating from the national budget. .................... 38
Figure 9: Tuoi Tre Cuoi’s Facebook page, 2019 January 1. Corrupt officials are depicted as
insects. .................................................................................................................................. 39
Figure 10: Tuoi Tre Cuoi’s Facebook page, 2017 December 19. Depiction of systemic
corruption. A dad and his son are having a conversation, in which, the son repeatedly asked
at which level a bribery will affect their livelihood. ............................................................ 40
Figure 11: Tuoi Tre Cuoi’s Facebook page, 2018 December 1. Depiction of corruption in
education as a systemic problem. The higher authority in education forces the lower to
“achieve,” which eventually results in students getting hit by their teachers. ..................... 41
Figure 12: Tuoi tre cuoi, 2019 June 21. The corrupt force (the rats) bribes the anti-corrupt
force (the cat) with the envelope to notify them with the gold ring. .................................... 41
Figure 13: Figure 13: Tuoi Tre Cuoi, 2019 July 3. If you win, you get everything; if you fall,
you can fall back to retirement. The cartoon portrayed the race between the official decision
to prosecute (Quyet dinh khoi to), which is held by the police, and the official decision to
retire (Quyet dinh nghi huu). ................................................................................................ 42
Figure 14: Tuoi Tre Cuoi, 2016 July 1. The excuse “assignment according to the correct
protocol” is being used as a magic shield to protect politicians from charges of nepotism and
cronyism. In the cartoon, the old man, likely to be a father or a family member, a assures the
young man, who is assigned a managerial role, that there is a magic shield. ...................... 43
Figure 15: Tuoi tre cuoi. 2019 June 21. A very slow resignation. ...................................... 44
Figure 16: Tuoi tre cuoi, 2019 July 15. A corrupt official offers his dirty money for immunity
from the “stove”. .................................................................................................................. 45
Figure 17:Tuoi tre cuoi. 2019 Jan 04. Land is often captured, or “eaten”, by corrupted interest
groups, those who “overeat” it has to enter the “stove”—the party’s recent euphemism for
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the anti-corruption campaign. There are many kinds of lands: public, planned, compensating,
bidding, etc., which are often “eaten” by the corrupted. ...................................................... 46
Figure 18:Tuoi tre cuoi. 2019 June 20. A father told his son a man who sits in the dark is not
about being strong, but he is only scared of the electric bill. ............................................... 47
Figure 19:Tuoi tre cuoi. 2019 July 16. Studying hard is no longer the way to get ahead in
life: The young man is thinking about the time when he studied hard while his parents equally
cheered him on. .................................................................................................................... 47
Figure 20: Tuoi Tre Cuoi, 2019 Feb 26. The meeting of the kitchen gods: The king of heaven
is highly pleased with the sports achievement of the country, meanwhile, the kitchen gods
who take care of education and economics are goofing around. .......................................... 49
Figure 21: Tuoi Tre Cuoi, 2018 October 15. Being a rich kid means hoarding a lot of gas
and fuels. .............................................................................................................................. 50
Figure 22: Tuoi Tre Cuoi, 2018 Sep 25. Vietnamese government and Industry 4.0: Zero
listening, zero seeing, zero knowing, and zero inspecting. .................................................. 51
Figure 23: The histograms of the distribution of total social media reactions (a), comments
(b), and shares (c). ................................................................................................................ 53
Figure 24: Tuoi Tre Cuoi, 2018 June 24. The whole family being government officials. An
old man walks into a town, and he finds every government building belongs to a family. . 54
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Representation of corruption in Vietnam’s contemporary

mass media: Insights from online news satirical cartoons

Abstract: The art of satirical cartooning in Vietnam, a one-party state where the media

environment is not fully open, is currently subject to multiple liberating forces: a globalized

emerging economy, the rise of social networks, and a rich tradition of satire. This thesis

examines the effects of this new dynamics on the evolution of the satirical art form by

analyzing changes in the representation of corruption in cartoons of a well-known and

pioneering state-owned online news outlet in Vietnam. Using a mixed method approach, the

study finds a heavy use of auxiliary markers (in 100% cartoons of the random sample) and

an enduring taboo of not depicting real-life public figures too realistically or unflatteringly

(99% of the sample is generic depiction of people). These findings indicate the influence of

a strict media environment as well as of a Confucian culture where “face” is almost a sacred

value. The growing trend of depicting corruption as a systematic problem, which is present

in 45% of the sample, hints at a change in the sensibility of the audiences and a movement

toward a more tolerant mediascape. Yet, this may also be a worrying sign of increasing

cynicism and apathy among the audiences. Nonetheless, the practice of political cartoons in

Vietnam has provided an important public venue for collective political reflections and

social solidarity on a daily basis.

Keywords: political satire; satirical cartoons; social media; mass media; arts; corruption
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Chapter 1: Introduction

Vietnam provides a unique circumstance for a study on how satire was employed for

political and social critique in the age of social media: (i) the country always has a rich tradition

of satire; (ii) its population is young and tech-savvy, provided with unprecedented freedom in

political expression thanks to the rise of online social media, and (iii) the one-party state

constantly updates its legal and technical measures to stay on top of these changes. This study

fleshes out the possible impacts of social media on the deployment of satirical cartoons in

online news to express socio-political critiques in the one-party society.

Figure 1: A 3blues-and-1red model for the rationale to study satirical cartoon in online news in
Vietnam.

Figure 1 presents a 3blues-and-1red model that captures the rationale to study satirical

cartoons in Vietnamese online news. The three blue factors represent three liberating forces:

the globalized market economy, a rich tradition of satire, and social media. The red element

represents a constraining force: the one-state party’s rule in Vietnam. The remarkable growth

of the Internet in Vietnam, to which the State did not attempt to supervise or design in the

beginning, has wholly altered Vietnam’s information and the media landscape in just a couple

of decades. In 2017, it is reported that from 54% to 60% of Vietnam’s 90 million people

population is online (Abuza, 2015; Dien-Luong, 2017a; Hayton, 2010; Nhan-Dan, 2017). In
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terms of sheer numbers, Vietnam is “a Facebook nation” with 64 million (67% of Vietnam’s

population) accounts, putting the country at 7th in the world (Ha-Phuong, 2017). On average,

Vietnamese people spend 2 hours 39 minutes on social media daily (Lao Dong Infographic,

2018), and nearly half of the population get daily news from social media (Minh-Nga 2018).

It is then not surprising that social media and the Internet have fostered greater freedom

of political expression and engagement for Vietnamese people. The British historian Tim

Doling noted “Facebook has been nothing short of a revolution in Vietnam” (Dien-Luong,

2017a; Thiem, 2017); Nguyen and Vuong (2016) also argued in Vietnam, digitizing is

democratizing. Many protests that are organized online were successful in pressuring the

government to change its policies (Bui, 2016; Dien-Luong, 2017b; Vi-Tran, 2018).

Regarding the news, with social media, the possibility of going viral has changed the media

business model, even though they are all controlled by the state. Many journalists, if not

directly, measure the success of their articles by the number of reactions and shares they

attract online, and they are, therefore, at least sensitive to it (Bradley & Hoang, 2016). As

satirists can largely be seen as the “natural populists” (Wagg, 1998), satire arguably fits really

well with the interests of the journalists in the age of social media. There have already been

cases in which the satirical element of an article seems to account for its success in going

viral. For example, the article on the “PhD and Master Incubator,” a graduate school with a

suspiciously high rate of turning out people with highest academic qualifications, got reacted

to 14,000 times on Facebook (Hong-Hanh, 2017). Other news outlets that had less catchy

titles when reporting this case receive much less attention, even though they are of the same

level of popularity and credential (Hoang-Thuy, 2017; Le-Van, 2017; PV, 2017).

This background makes it apt to ask whether or not the art of political satire in Vietnam

experiences any changes under the influence of the three liberating forces. If things have

changed, how so? And to what extent is the contemporary practice of satire the continuation
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of its historical socio-political characteristics? In answering these questions, the study will

look at the representation of corruption in satirical cartoons from a state-owned online news

outlet, Tuoi Tre Cuoi (Youth Humor), who represents the dynamic in Figure 1 perfectly.
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Chapter 2: Literature Review

2.1.Political satire around the world

"Satire is, therefore, a hopeful genre; it suggests

progress and the betterment of society, and it

suggests that the arts can light the path of

progress."- (Colletta, 2009)-

This section explains the basic aspects of political satire, then goes on to explore the

differences and similarities of the art of political satire in the East and the West, as well as,

in a democratic setting and an authoritarian setting.

Satire, in the broadest sense, is an art of using humor, irony, exaggeration to criticize and

expose some ridiculous aspects of people’s behavior, their stupidity, and vices. Given that

the nature of political satire is to hold up vices and follies in the political realm to humorous,

witty scrutiny and criticism, and through it, to effect changes, satire is, as Griffin (1994)

argues, is a moral art, and Colletta (2009) goes further and argues that satire is an optimistic

genre. Griffin (1994) explains the objective of satire is to convince an audience that certain

things and people are wrong or preposterous through the use of exaggeration and some forms

of fiction. According to Griffin, satire is different from the pure comedy by virtue of

referencing to the real world, satire's victims usually are from the real world, and they are

treated with a dark and sharp tone referencing to real-world moral standards and purposes.

Colletta explains why the art form, though it existed since the ancient Greek period, only

came into popularity since the arrival of the Age of Reason, the Enlightenment. Satire works

because it employs incongruity, which could only be recognized by reason. The artists,

whether deploying Horatian satire, which is more amiable in mocking or Juvenalian satire,
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or more censorious and insulting, trust the capacity of human for rationality and hope when

people realize their shortcomings reflected in a joke in an exaggerating manner, they can

correct these faults (Colletta, 2009). To sum it up, Colletta writes, satire “suggests progress

and the betterment of society, and it suggests that the arts can light the path of progress.”

Another essential component of satire is irony, which is the act of saying or expressing the

contrary to what the author and the audience know is (or ought to be) the case. Jonathan

Swift’s “The modest proposal” (1729) is often cited as the most successful and dramatic

satirical use of irony (Colletta, 2009; Hall, 2014).

One of the crucial aspects of satire is the laughter that arises from the interaction between

the producer (writer, comedian, cartoonist) and the audience through a number of mediums:

print, cartoon, TV, audio, or online networks. Furthermore, the producers and mediums do

not exist in a vacuum; they are situated in a socio-political and economic environment.

Hence, different socio-political-economic backgrounds are expected to induce different

variations and mutations of the art form. With that in mind, the next section delves into the

differences in the evolution of political satire in the West, China, other developing countries,

and Vietnam where the macro-environments are vastly different from one another.

In the West, where democracy is the norm, political and media actors have increasingly

deployed satire to bring attention to heated issues. The process is driven by the need to

compete in the free market and democratic elections. By contrast, in China, due to the intense

surveillance and self-censorship, the critique in political satire is much more overt. Studies

on political satire in the West, especially those from America, often bring up the worry that

postmodernist cynicism has become too pervasive. Most studies on online Chinese satire

have, therefore, shown how this practice is primarily about social solidarity.

The West
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The production and consumption of political satire have traditionally been tied with

subversive intent. In satire, the powerful are frequently brought down low while the weak are

empowered (Gao & Pugsley, 2008; Phan, 2003). This is how satire holds so much appeal for

the public, as George Orwell has aptly put: “Every joke is a tiny revolution” (2004). However,

as the art itself evolves, one can argue the boundaries between serious critical reflection and

pure entertainment, between politics and humor have been blurred. It is still an open debate

whether political satire has facilitated political engagement, or whether the art is a mere form

of political expression, or whether it has even generated only cynicism and disengagement

among the spectators. The debate takes place in the growing complexity of modern media

environment and contemporary politics.

In the West, to compete, political actors, as well as media actors, have increasingly

deployed humor to influence public opinions. For example, Bill Clinton was one of the first

presidential candidates in the U.S. to make an appearance on entertainment programs and

talk shows, turning these platforms into political media to sell himself to the American public.

After that, in Western media, there has been a growing convergence between “hard” politics

and “soft” media, between entertainment and news, between politics and humor. This fact is

signified by the births of a growing number of successful shows that heavily rely on political

satire, such as the late-night shows by David Letterman and Jay Leno, or Bill Maher's

Politically Incorrect and Real Time (Lichter, 2018; Owen, 2017). As entertainment programs

increasingly seek to mine political contents, the old-fashioned programs that struggle to keep

up with the competition have now rushed to make their content more entertaining. The

Internet and social media have furthered this trend with the emergence of online news outlets

such as VICE, Vox, Buzzfeed, or the Young Turks. In the most extreme, one can arguably

say: all satire is political, all humor is political, and all news is entertainment.
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However, studies that investigate satire and political participation in the democratic West

show a multitude of factors that can influence this relationship between these two factors.

For example, researchers differentiate between late-night comedies and parody/satire

(Hoffman & Young, 2012; Hoffman & Young, 2011; Jacobs & Wild, 2013). The Daily Show

and The Colbert Report are typical examples of political entertainment in the form of parody

and satire, while The Late Show or The Tonight Show represents late-night comedy. In late-

night comedy, the jokes focus on personalities or traits of politicians and punchlines-oriented,

for parody and satire, the jokes invite the audience to resituate a political situation, often very

substantively. In a survey 499 students of diverse backgrounds, Hoffman and Young (2011)

find a positive relationship between viewing parody/satire with political participation, but not

the punchlines-oriented late-night comedy. Using a different approach, Jacobs and Wild

(2013) analyze the cultural sociology of the two famous political satire shows in the U.S.—

The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. The authors use the concept of the aesthetic public

sphere, which is built upon from Habermas' public sphere (Habermas, 1991). The concept of

aesthetic public sphere essentially looks at entertainment media's civic value, which helps

guide the political scientists to look at the hybrid among politics, news, and entertainment of

political comedy. The authors argue that the cultural hierarchies and the dominant discourses

have limited the kind of influence these new media can exert on the public discussions. Thus,

to provoke more critical reflection in public, political comedy should be situated within a

broader context organized by elite media rather than being considered only belong to the

informal public. Colletta (2009) argues the pervasive postmodern irony in political satire

shows in the U.S. has encouraged political disengagement. Taking The Colbert Report as an

example, Colletta argued the reader of Colbert’s jokes only find the jokes funny because he

or she had been aligned with Colbert’s politics already. Though one can read Colletta’s

argument as an attack on Colbert or Jon Stewart personally, for not doing more than just

turning all news into entertainment, Colletta is worried more about the toxic role of television
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as a medium that mediates the postmodern contemporary culture. As televisions programs

self-reflexively cite other programs, satire television has undermined the “seriousness” of

meaning in the U.S.’s contemporary culture. As Colletta lays out for the traditional satire to

work, two things are necessary: a stable set of values and engagement. Both the satirist and

the audiences must agree on what is normative, what is real, what is true, what is right, and

they must agree there can be some changes for the better once what is short of normative,

true, real and right are pointed out. When these two conditions do not hold if satire exists, it

exists only to further itself, it becomes self-referential, which is a characteristic of the

postmodern world.

China

As the political and media context of China is very similar to Vietnam, and there is a

wealth of studies on online satire in this country, reviewing these studies can be informative.

First of all, there has never been a society that is surveilled and digitally controlled like China.

According to Meng (2011), the commonly used term “the Great Firewall” of China is

misleading in that it has undermined the sophisticated system the Chinese government has

put in place to control the Internet. It is better to conceptualize the Chinese control of digital

political communication as a multi-layered evolving system of legal and technological

measures designed to encourage self-censorship and control, shape, and guide all political

expressions (Esarey & Xiao, 2011; Meng, 2011; Wang, Juffermans, & Du, 2016). This

system has evolved as a response towards the ever-growing complexity of online political

engagement of Chinese netizens. Grasping this will enable a more nuanced understanding of

how sophisticated the Chinese people are in finding the balance between expressing

criticisms of the government and evading state-censorship and state-thought-policing.

Chinese online political satire, as a form of mediated political engagement, needs to be

understood in this context.

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There is an on-going debate on whether Chinese online political satire is essentially

about political resistance. The proponents of the view that Chinese online satire is a

straightforward form of resistance essentially draw on the work of Bakhtin’s understanding

of the carnival, the time and space in Medieval Europe that is wild and grotesque where all

rules and norms are suspended. Li Hongmei, for example, sees online satire in China as a

place where power relationships are temporarily suspended (Li, 2011), while Meng (2011)

views online satire in terms of a virtual carnival, a collective effort in resistance. In light of

this perspective, George Orwell (2004)'s “Every joke is a tiny revolution” is often referred

to. The critics of this approach, however, argue that it necessarily negates the complex and

ambiguous power dynamics that the practice negotiates. Many also point out the most crucial

aspect of Chinese online political satire is the solidarity and communal sharing (Nordin &

Richaud, 2014; Yang & Jiang, 2015; Yang, Tang, & Wang, 2015), even within those who

view the practice under the lens of carnival and resistance (Meng, 2011). There are different

nuances to this line of argument. Yang and Jiang (2015) use the concept of “ritual satire,”

developed by Test (1986, pp.67), and show the engagement of Chinese netizens in creating,

re-mixing, re-making and circulating the jokes goes beyond political resistance, it is first and

foremost about social solidarity, about sharing a communal laughter. Meanwhile, Nordin and

Richaud (2014) point out, in taking the official discourse then mockingly using them in a

daily basis, the urban youth in China is engaging in depoliticizing the Party’s languages,

rather than directly challenging the government’ s politics. Szablewicz (2014) reviews the

academic debate on diaosi, one of the most popular internet memes of 2012 in China, and

interpret as a signal for the disillusionment among young Chinese netizens about the lack of

chances for upward socio-economic mobility. The authors argue diaosi, as an infrapolitical

practice, is a fusion of political critique, identity-making, meaning-making, and cyber ritual

phenomenon. The authors show how this online practice is a collective attempt to create

critical social solidarity and politics of cultural intimacy. The notion of identity formation,
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rather than critique, has been noted by Guo (2018) through an analysis of the underlying

patterns of Chinese catchphrases online from 2013 to 2015. Tang and Yang (2011) study the

phenomenon of the satirical song “grass-mud horse” that took over the Chinese cyberspace

in 2009-2011. Applying the framework of “symbolic power,” the authors show how the horse

gains power from the social context and allows Chinese people to vent their cynicism,

frustration, and resentment against the government’s policy. Moreover, this symbolic power

is likely only to provoke harsher controls of the state over the Internet, which has been

demonstrated by Luqiu (2017). Consequently, the phenomenon reveals the imbalance

between the symbolic and the coercive power.

Overall, the studies in China have shed light on the complicated relationship that political

satire has with the Internet, social media, and the single-party society. Most emphasize the

communal/collective aspect, the covert-criticism nature of Chinese online satire. These

features will become relevant in the present study on online political satire in Vietnam, a

country with generally similar media and political environment to China. This trend is also

relevant to countries with a similar background such as Vietnam, whereby the art of political

satire is influenced by the dynamics of the single-party state, market economy, and the growth

of the Internet (Sharbaugh & Nguyen, 2014; Vuong et al., 2018; Vuong, 2014).

The developing world

In reviewing the state of political satire in other developing countries, this section

generates a breadth of understanding of the subject, which can later factor in the analyses of

the Vietnam case.

Skoric, Zhu, and Pang (2016) study political expression and participation in social media

in Confucian Asian countries, including China, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and

Taiwan. Though all of the countries in the study share the same Confucian heritage, they are
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different democratically. The study finds political participation in authoritarian countries is

much less compared with democratic countries, yet political expression is quite similar across

the spectrum. This finding is explained by invoking the subtle form of political expression

such as satire and sarcasm that could circumvent suppression. Regarding online political

satire in two former Soviet states, Belarus and Ukraine, Miazhevich (2015) discovers a quite

similar pattern to the study of Skoric et al. (2016). The ironic participatory popular practice

takes on different patterns in the two countries, as it responds to the growth of new media

technology as well as to the political development in each country. Using a longitudinal case-

study approach and analyzing the linguistic and visual aspects of online political satire in the

two countries from 2003 to 2013, the author shows that the aspiring democracy Ukraine

offers much more freedom and flexibility in the practice while Belarus restricts the alternative

public space much more strictly. However, in both cases, the author expresses concerns that

online political satire can risk the fragmentation of the civic society as well as the

inconsistency in the discourse, which could eventually lead to the marginalization of

alternative voices.

A study in India locates online satire within a vibrant digital production context that

characterizes contemporary Indian public life (Punathambekar, 2015). Punathambekar

essentially understands satire as a compelling narrative and communicative form of thinking

and caring about politics in modern day India. The author shows how online satire in the

form of videos has linked the issue of the current elections with age-old problems such as

castes, class, gender, sexuality, and religious nationalism. Owen (2017) looks at online

political satire in post-uprising Bahrain as a form of creative resistance and examines how

social media's role in shaping and defining the practice. Owen argues social media plays a

vital role in the emergence of a new form of satire, and it allows the social activists to

challenge the attempt of the government to spread its account of the revolution in 2011.
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Similar to Owen's research, Marzouki (2015) explores the satirical YouTube videos in post-

protest Morocco and argues the web has enabled a new participatory medium and a

competing cultural form for the cultural citizenship in the country.

A study of the effects of political satire on students in two universities in North Central

Nigeria found evidence for the educational value of the art form. The authors demonstrate

through a statistical analysis of the survey data on 366 students that there is a positive

association between political knowledge and exposure to both mainstream political satire and

social media satire. For political attitude, the authors shows exposure to social media satire

remains a positive predictor (Mustapha, Omar, & Atoloye, 2019). Similarly, a Pakistani study

which surveys people of various demographic background shows that political comedy

should not be viewed merely as entertainment, rather, people in Pakistan can often get

political information from these comedy programs. As a result, political comedy can be

harnessed to create awareness of political situation (Zaheer, 2018). Riaz, Nazir, and Bhatti

(2018) also study Pakistanis subjects and finds evidence that political satirical shows are the

main source of information and raise awareness for the respondents, however, there is no

statistically significant effect on political affiliation and voting behaviors.

To date, there have been very few studies on online political satire in Vietnam; the

notable one is the work of Sharbaugh and Nguyen (2014), which studies the emerging meme-

making culture in Vietnam. The authors analyze two case studies and conclude that the

widespread practice of digital remix and meme-making is a cultural-specific form of civic

and political engagement, though not explicitly about political resistance, they can exert a

subtle and but real influence on Vietnamese emerging economy. This study falls very much

in line with other studies that have been done in China, where most researchers focus on the

subtlety of the practice and its cultural and contextual characteristics.

2.2. A brief history of the art of satire in Vietnam

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“Trăm năm bia đá cũng mòn

Ngàn năm bia miệng vẫn còn trơ trơ”

“Hundreds of years eventually erase that which is inscribed in stone,

Thousands of years won’t take away that which is inscribed by the mouths.”

-Vietnamese Proverb-

Though the literature on satire and satirical cartoons in Vietnam has been quite limited,

especially those written in English, there is evidence of a rich tradition of satire in the country.

One can find evidence for the lively rich tradition of satire in Vietnam in folk culture. Satirical

storytelling could be traced to the early thirteen-century when the famous 398-line poem

“Truyện Trê Cóc” (lit. “A story of the catfish and the frog”) was believed to be recorded

(Woodside, 1988). The poem recounts a lawsuit between two frogs and a catfish at the office

of the nearest Confucian court over the tadpoles that were supposedly the frogs’ but stolen

by the catfish. The story, thus, mocks the Confucian mandarin system for its inability to

understand the natural law of the environment (Woodside, 1988). At the same time, it is

worth noting that, according to Phan (2003), in traditional Vietnamese society, people can be

punished for having socially unacceptable behaviors by spreading satirical songs and verses

(vè) about the violator. The proverb above captures this sense: it implies the harshest

punishment for a person being bad-mouthed, ridiculed and laughed at; that his reputation is

forever tainted.

The earliest physical evidence of satire in Vietnam can be found in woodblock

reproduction of traditional drawings dated to the late eleventh or early twelfth century (Phan,

2003). These drawings, many are highly satirical in nature, depict the life of ordinary people

in traditional villages of Vietnam. For example, animals in human roles are regularly used to
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lampoon and satirize foolish and hypocritical behaviors. Arrogant people are often portrayed

as toads, oppressive village officials as cats, while the poor and the oppressed as mouses

(Phan, 2003).

Perhaps the folktales about Trang Quynh, which all Vietnamese children read, represent

the satirical spirit of the Vietnamese people the best. Trang Quynh is a folktale character,

who lived around the latter half of the 17th century, succeeded in passing the exam for a place

in the feudal court but decided to decline the prestige. Trang Quynh’s tales are about how he

uses satire to blaspheme the Gods and the Spirits, to make fun of the King, the Lord, the

mandarins, the wealthy or the pseudo-intellectuals (Nguyen, 2013). In a comparative study

of witty characters in East Asian folklore by Nguyen (2013), Trang Quynh is compared with

North Korea’s Kim Sondal. The author concludes these witty characters might be different

in terms of social status, yet, they share a pattern of using their wit and mischievousness to

subject those who enjoy power, wealth and social status but lack competence, humility, and

kindness to the satirical laughter of the mass. According to the author, these characters are

the symbol for the people's dream of intelligence, courage, and creativity. In many ways, they

act as the arbiter of social justice for the common people. According to Hoang (2014), before

1945 or before the establishment of the Vietnamese nation, stories about Trang Quynh were

widespread, and they were retold spontaneously, after that, people started to view the

folktales as the tales imbued with the critical spirit of the people. It is not an overstatement

that Trang Quynh is indeed one of the most known folk characters in the Vietnamese souls.

The aim of satire in modernized Vietnam is similar to the anonymous satire in the pre-

modern Vietnam, which is to target social injustices, to ridicule those in power, and to give

a voice to the suffering masses (Phan, 2003). The Vietnamese people, during their primary

education, also study two satirist poets who lived the 19th century, Nguyen Khuyen (1835-

1909) and Tu Xuong (1870-1907). They lived in the chaotic period of the beginning of the
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French colonization of Vietnam, which has fueled the satirical element in their poetry (Ngo,

2013). The subjects of their satirical poetry range from their own selves to the bad habits of

the people in their normal daily life, to the political life of the time. In the French colonial

time, Dumb luck, a classic novel that was written by Vu Trong Phung in 1936, was famous

for the using satirical devices to critique the decadent and hypocritical lifestyles of the so-

called “high society” and “intellectual class” at the time (Mai, 2016).

Here, besides noting the noble and optimistic aims of satire (Colletta, 2009) in the

Vietnamese tradition, it is also important to emphasize how economic pressure and political

change have shaped the evolution of satire in modernized Vietnam. Driven by the desire to

increase sales, by 1930s, newspapers had increasingly used jokes, cartoons, and humorous

stories, making this an established practice. The subject for the jokes was outdated social and

religious practices and of course, the colonial rulers and their puppet royal courts (Lent, 2014;

Phan, 2003). As the French government in Vietnam at the time began to crack down on

satirists and intensify censorship, the explicit caricatures gave way to a more symbolic

representation—the artists turned to symbols rooted from the folk songs, verses, and

literature. For example, people with pot-belly and barefoot often represent backwardness and

ignorance of the rural residents; obese men dressed in government uniform or mandarin robe

represent the greediness and corruption in the political system. During the 30 years of

wartime, from 1945-1975, cartooning in North Vietnam focused on the war efforts, some

famous artists such as Si Ngoc, Bui Xuan Phai, Huy Toan, etc. all published their illustrations

in state-owned newspapers (Le-Thuy, 2011; Lent, 2014). While in the South, the practice

continued to flourish with the success of one of the most famous satirical artists in Vietnam,

Nguyen Hai Chi. His works were even featured in the New York Times, Asahi Shinbun, and

Newsweek (Lent, 2014; Phan, 2003). After the unification in 1975, political satire in forms

of cartoons did not fare well until after Vietnam opened to the world in 1986. Lent (2014)
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suggested that the combining force of the political environment, as well as the harsh

economic reality of the time, was perhaps behind the lack of development in satirical

cartooning.

Since 1986, thanks to gradual economic reforms and an open-door policy, Vietnam has

enjoyed continual rapid economic growth, consistently recording a gross domestic product

(GDP) growth rate of over 6% in the recent five years (Vuong, 2019a; Vuong, 2019b; Vuong,

2014). Among the developing countries, Vietnam has become one of the most globalized

economies, having signed bilateral free trade agreements with many major players, including

China, Japan, Korea, India, etc. (Kopf, 2018; Vuong, 2019b). The economic transformation

has undoubtedly carried important implications for the practice of political satire in the

country. The newfound prosperity has given the Vietnamese more time to catch up with the

daily news, including trending satirical contents. To meet this growing demand for news

content, most newspapers and magazines now have their online sites and released

illustrations and cartoons daily. Compared with the 1990s period, when satirical cartoon only

appeared weekly in major newspapers such as Nhan Dan, Thanh Nien, and Tuoi Tre (Lent,

2014), now the art form has become a daily production.

Tuoi Tre Cuoi’s print edition and the now 15-years-old Vietnam Television show’s Year

End Meeting (or Tao Quan) are the two examples of popular satirical productions prior to

the age of social media. These media platforms tackle controversial issues such as corruption,

social trends, political and economic events and their use of satire has gradually become more

sophisticated (McAllister & Luckman, 2015). Now with the rise of social media, all

newspapers have launched their Facebook sites which interact with the audience on a daily

basis (Nguyen, 2012). Another important change in the age of the Internet and social media

is that major news outlets have started to use the cartoons drawn by their readers more
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frequently, while just nearly eight years ago, most of them only used the drawings of their

in-house artists.

Chapter 3: Materials and Methods

3.1. Materials

In order to answer the research questions, this study analyzes the changes in the content

and forms of the satirical cartoons in Tuoi Tre Cuoi (Youth Humor), the magazine captures

the 3blue-1red dynamics shown in Figure 1. First, Tuoi Tre Cuoi has a long tradition of being

at the frontier of using satirical cartoons for political and social critiques. According to John

A. Lent (2014), Tuoi Tre Cuoi is an important venue for cartoonists in Vietnam given the

absence of a journalistic tradition, centuries of mandarinal bureaucracy and one hundred

years of colonial censorship. Second, it is a magazine subdivision of Tuoi Tre (Youth), one

of the most widely read newspapers in Vietnam, founded in 1975 as a mouthpiece of the Ho

Chi Minh branch of the Communist Youth Union (Nguyen, 2012). The paper’s daily print

circulation reached about 400,000 in 2010 (McKinley, 2011), a figure that has not been

updated since. Tuoi Tre Cuoi is filled with satirical cartoons, illustrated jokes, and caricatures.

The magazine has become so popular that Keenan (1997, cited by Lent, 2014) suggested that

it was setting the agenda for modern satire in Vietnam (Lockyer, 2006). In recent years, with

the penetration of the Internet and the rise of social media (Abuza, 2015; Hayton, 2010), Tuoi

Tre Cuoi, as with other news outlets, launched its Facebook homepage in 2015 and now

enjoyed the readership of 550,000 followers. With such an important role for the practice of

political cartoon in Vietnam, Tuoi Tre Cuoi is a well-suited source of data for the purpose of

this study.

3.2.Methods: A mixed method approach

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To find out the changes in the content and form of satirical cartoons of Tuoi Tre Cuoi

over time, this study utilizes both the qualitative and the quantitative approach. In terms of

the qualitative analytical framework, this thesis is inspired by Scott (2007)’s work on a

comparison of comic book propaganda from World War II to September 11. Scott (2007)

focuses on the changes in the representation of heroes in comic books in the U.S. over the

years, and extracts from there the socio-cultural meanings. Similarly, this study observes the

changes in the representation of corruptions in Tuoi Tre Cuoi over time. Moreover, this study

also relies on previously published works on Vietnamese satirical cartoons such as Phan

(2003), Keenan (1997) and Lent (2014) to mark off the important changes that have happened.

To extract the meanings of these changes, this study will compare and contrast the changing

patterns of online satire in Vietnam with Chinese and American online satire.

The quantitative approach aims at substantiate the observations done in the qualitative

parts. A random sample of 100 cartoons from 2018 Apr 09th to 2019 September 30th is

selected. To ensure the sample is truly random, a strict procedure is followed. We start with

the period from 2019 September 30th to September 24th. Then using a random number

generator on the Internet with a constraint set from 1 to 7, a random day is picked in that

block of 7 days. In this case, the computer generates number 3, which means 2019 September

25th is picked, any political cartoons on that date are chosen to be coded. The process is

repeated until a sample size of 100 is achieved. In this way, every single day from 2019

September 30th backward has a chance to be represented in the final sample.

These cartoons are available in the official Facebook page of Tuoi Tre Cuoi, which is

launched on 2015 January 1st. To achieve a random sample, for each week in the period above,

a date will be randomly chosen using a random number generator, then I will pick the

cartoons published on that date until the all weeks are represented in the sample. These

cartoons will be codified or datified based on the following variables:

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• Date collected: The date on which the data were collected.

• Date published: The date on which the cartoons were published.

• Target categories: Governance, Socio-culture, Education, Environment, Daily

life.

• Presence of auxiliary markers: If there is the presence of auxiliary markers,

then this variable will take “1” as the value; if not, then it will be “0.”

• Presence of systemic corruption: If there is depiction of systemic corruption,

i.e., rotten aspects of the political system, then this variable will take on value
“1;” if not, then “0.”

• Presence of traditional motifs: If there is the presence of traditional motifs such

as folklores, idioms, songs, verses, stories, etc., then this variable takes on value
“1;” if not, then “0.”

• Target categories: The target of the joke in the cartoons. There are four
categories: (1) morality: concerning the morality of government officials or of
the people related to the pollical system; (2) governance: concerning any example
of failed or incompetent governance; (3) injustice: any depiction of the injustice
or unfair condition, especially, when it contrasts livelihood of the citizen and
those in power; (4) Daily struggles: any depiction of the daily struggles and
concerns of the citizen that are relevant to governance.

• Generic or Individualistic: Whether the depiction of the people in the cartoons

resemble real politicians or public figures, or it is generic depiction.

• Presence of international elements: If there is the presence of international

motifs or elements, for example, names of famous Westerners, Hollywood
movies, memes, etc., then the value will be “1;” if not, then “0.”

• Likes: number of likes the cartoon received on the date of data collection

• Comments: number of comments the cartoon received on the date of data

collection

• Shares: number of shares the cartoon received on the date of data collection

• Total number of social media reactions: the sum of likes, comments, and
shares.

An example of the final dataset is shown in Figure 2:

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Figure 2: An example of the final dataset

The dataset is first saved in an Excel file, then, later transformed into a csv file. The csv

file is processed and analyzed using R software (v3.6.1).

3.3 Four dimensions of political satire’s effects: Activism, Affects, Educational value,

and Social Solidarity

In order to analyze the significance of the results both in terms of its socio-political

meanings as well as its value for the scientific literature, this study proposes that the

significance of the results should be analyzed through the following four dimensions:

activism, social solidarity, educational value, and affects. These four dimensions have been

identified through reviewing the literature on scholarly works done on the nexus of political

satire, satirical cartoons, and social media (Figure 3).

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Figure 3: Four dimensions of political satire extracted from the literature.

First, on the dimension of activism, there are multiple studies, especially those done in

the democratic West, that have explored the effects of consuming satirical political news on

political engagement or political participation. Usually, a combined method of experiment

and interview is the instrument of these studies. The researchers evaluate the level of political

participation by asking the respondents to answer a survey of their engagement with specific

political activities such as attending a political speech or debate, contacting public official,

doing campaign work, posting comments online, etc. (Hoffman & Young, 2011); contacting

elected official, attending a campaign event, etc. (Cao & Brewer, 2008); holding up a sign

on a political issue (Lee & Kwak, 2014).

Second, the affect dimension is essentially about the emotions, feelings, and perceptions

of the individual audience. There are both qualitative and quantitative ways that have been

used to understand this dimension of political satire’s effects. On the qualitative front,

scholars often worried that the tone of political satire tends toward cynicism, which might
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create in the audience a sense of political apathy, especially among the famous political

entertainment shows such as The Daily Show (Hart & Hartelius, 2007), or the Colbert’s

Report (Colletta, 2009). Colletta (2009) deploys the framework of postmodern irony to

criticize the use of satire among the modern television show. On the quantitative front,

researchers often utilize experimental design to flesh out the effects of satirical news

exposure (Brewer, Young, & Morreale, 2013; Rill & Cardiel, 2013; Stewart, 2011), survey

is also among commonly used method (Lee, 2014). For example, Rill and Cardiel (2013)

recruit 321 individuals and exposed them to user-generated satirical videos, then test their

level of political cynicism, political information efficacy (how confident a person feels about

their political information), candidate favorability, and candidate credibility prior and after

viewing the videos. In contrast, Baumgartner (2008) only uses the posttest-only experimental

design, in which the authors tested the evaluation of candidates after the participants were

exposed to a political cartoon. Another example is Brewer et al. (2013) measuring political

trust (the trust in the ability of the government) and internal political efficacy (the trust in

one’s ability to have a good understanding and significant participation in politics) in

participants who read satirical news versus those who do not. Another common method is

the use of interview, for example, Lee (2014) attempts to understand the effects of exposure

to online satire among young people by performing statistical analysis of the correlation

between how they feel about certain candidates of the Chief Executive Election in Hong

Kong and their level of exposure.

Third, on the educational value of political satire, there are both theoretical as well as

empirical works on how satire can educate. The theoretical works highlight that satire, at its

best, can convey a sense of proportion to all subject matters; however difficult they are. As

such, Hall (2014) proposes a “satiric vision of politics,” in which satire can serve as a

powerful medium to teach important lessons about international relations. McAllister and

Luckman (2015) view the political humor used in the famous Vietnamese Television show,
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The Kitchen God, not only as entertainment but also a critical reflection of the political life

of the Vietnamese nation. Hayes (2016) argued for the effectiveness of satire in teaching

difficult issues in public affairs classroom. The current empirical literature shows that

viewers of political satire programs tend to gain a modest amount of knowledge about

political issues. However, there are conditions to these findings. For example, one of the

important hypotheses of the learning effect of exposure to satirical news is that consumption

of political comedy is a gateway to the acquisition of knowledge from conventional news,

and multiple cross-sectional survey data and experimental studies have provided firm support

to this hypothesis (Xenos & Becker, 2009). Specifically, researchers have found getting

exposed to political entertainment such as The Daily Show is correlated positively with the

level of campaign knowledge among youth and those with more education, and positively

associated with attentiveness toward a political issue (Cao, 2010). A recent study by Becker

and Bode (2018) shows that, compared with traditional news, political comedy is just as good

as a source of knowledge gain, but not as effective for evaluation of issue importance. This

is in line with what Glazier (2014) has previously suggested that in a political science

classroom, political satire, used in a diverse and critical manner can increase political efficacy.

Finally, the dimension of social solidarity is perhaps the contribution of Chinese

researchers doing work on the issue of online satire in China. Yang and Jiang (2015) examine

the practice of online political satire in China and distinguished five types of network satire

practices. The authors, utilizing the framework of Test (1986)’s ritual satire and de Certeau

(1984)’s everyday practice, show that in the context of China, online political satire is

essentially a networked act that serves to create a sense of social solidarity and cohesion

among the digital community. In the language of de Certeau, the everyday act of sharing,

reading, responding to, creating political jokes on digital networks amount to not only

cultural reception but also production. And in light of Test’s ritual satire, online satire in

China is an act of performing and expressing oneself in a communal context; circulation of

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jokes about our political life serves as a medium of sociality, and it provides a license for

individuals in the community to continue the jokes. The study of Yang and Jiang (2015)

builds on the previous works on Chinese online satirical memes such as “e gao (online

spoofs)” by Meng (2011), “grass mud horse” by Tang and Yang (2011), “diaosi (loser)” by

Yang et al. (2015) and Szablewicz (2014), and turning state official language into jokes by

Nordin and Richaud (2014). These studies apply various conceptual frameworks such as the

symbolic power (Tang & Yang, 2011), infrapolitics (Yang et al., 2015), or “structure of

feelings” (Szablewicz, 2014), but all converge to show that the practice of online satire in

Chinese context is deeply about collective identity-making, fostering emotional bond with

one another, and communicating increasing recognition of the lack of social upward mobility

in China. As such, these works highlight the importance of conceptualizing the effects of

political satire in terms of social solidarity, which appears to be missing in the works on

televised political satire in the West.

It is important to stress here that the four dimensions can overlap and intersect with each

other. The clearest case of overlapping is perhaps the relationship between the affect

dimension and the social solidarity dimension. One can argue that social solidarity is a feeling

or attitude produced as a result of exposure to political satire, which means it should not be

a separate dimension. However, given the objective of this study is to: (1) study the changes

of contents and forms of political satire in Vietnamese news media; and (2) understand the

socio-cultural and political meaning of these changes, it is helpful to spell out social solidarity

as a new dimension for analytical purpose. First, as social solidarity is an aspect that comes

out predominantly from studies on online satire in China, a country which has a lot of socio-

political similarities with Vietnam—the subject of this study, putting social solidarity as a

separate dimension, as a practical matter, would enhance the clarity of the analysis. Second,

in truth, affect is such a broad issue that it can even encompass both educational value and

social solidarity. However, in such case, one can still perform the analyses along these two
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sub-dimensions. This suggests having them as separate dimensions will not deduct from the

analyses.
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Chapter 4: Results and Observations

4.1. Taboos

“The inversions, reversals, subversions, the breaking of rules and

crossing of invisible lines that characterize humorous phenomena may

have some universal shapes and shifts, but they remain intimately and

often elusively localized in their nuance and content.”(Carty &

Musharbash, 2008)

Political satire and satirical cartoons are common communication devices around the

world; however, the cultural specificities often dictate what are appropriate and what are not

within a local region. Clearly, taboos, i.e., what are not allowed to be depicted in satirical

cartoons, make up an interesting area for an in-depth examination. Phan (2003) and Keenan

(1997) have observed there is a major difference between the political cartoons in the West

and in Vietnam. While in Western countries, high-profile politicians and other public figures

are often depicted in the cartoons in very unflattering manners, in Vietnam, it is a taboo for

cartoonists to do so. Caricatures of Vietnamese national leaders were almost non-existent.

However, there has been increased freedom among the cartoonists to take this taboo and

subject it to satirical depiction as well. For example, in 1999, in Tuoi Tre Cuoi, there was a

cartoon (Figure 4) where the editor of a newspaper pointed to the portraits of the national

leaders and famous people on the wall and reminded the artist not to depict them too

realistically.
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Figure 4: Tuoi Tre Cuoi, no. 185, June 1999 as cited by (Phan, 2003). The editor of a newspaper points
at the portraits of famous people on the wall and remind his artists to not draw them realistically.

As Phan (2003) has pointed out, in cases where the government officials are convicted,

these restrictions are removed. However, surveying the cartoons published by Tuoi Tre Cuoi

over the past three years, during which the anti-corruption campaign of the government has

intensified, and several high-profile national leaders have been arrested, this study has not

found any example of the realistic depiction of the government officials. It seems that the

liberal sentiment represented in 1999 (Figure 4) has never become mainstream.

4.2. The use of auxiliary markers

As seen in Figure 5, the cartoon employs the speech balloon, which says: “You must

remember these faces and your drawings must never resemble them.” This seems to be a

general tendency of political cartoons in Vietnam. The artists tend to employ auxiliary

markers and verbal cues so as to guide the readers toward their authorial intent, avoiding

erroneous interpretations. It seems this tendency has not changed until now. Figures 5 and 6

are obvious examples. As can be seen in Figure 5, the satirical cartoon presents the "Road to

the peak of corruption" reality show. In the picture, the prize is awarded to the government
 35 of 72

official who is in charge of failed projects that are altogether worth VND12 trillion (USD517

million) (perhaps it refers to the 12 failed national projects of the Ministry of Industry and

Trade, each valued at trillion of dong (LDO, 2017)). In order to interpret this cartoon, it is

clear that verbal cues are helpful.

Figure 5: Tuoi Tre Cuoi, 2017 December 19. The figure presents a reality show called “Road to the
peak of corruption,” in which the contestants present their failed national projects.

The tendency toward using auxiliary markers is often analyzed within the classification

of cartoon audiences into low-brow and high-brow categories. The audiences with less

education who might need more verbal cues and symbols are categorized as low-brow, while

the more educated audiences are categorized as high-brow (Alba, 1967). In the case of Tuoi

Tre Cuoi, the magazine caters to the widest possible audience. Thus, it might be the case that

most of their intended audience would need the verbal cues to make sense of the cartoons.

However, it can also be the fact that the strict political environment in Vietnam forces the

artists not to take the risk to let the audience infer the meaning of their cartoons too liberally.

It is important to remember that Tuoi Tre Cuoi, after all, is a state-owned enterprise.
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Figure 6: Tuoi Tre Cuoi, 2018 November 8. The figure presents the illusion of punishment within the
political system. An official is punished and get demoted, yet somehow after that, he arrives at a higher
position.

4.3. Stereotypical representation of corruption

In terms of stereotypical representations in Vietnam’s political cartoon, the most

prevalent is the stereotype of the greedy, corrupt government official. In Figures 7, 8, and 9,

the corrupt government officials are drawn with a big, fat belly. In fact, in Figure 7, the more

corrupt an official is, the fatter and bigger he looks. In many cases, the government officials

are also referred to as a mandarin of a royal court (“quan” in Vietnamese). Figure 8 presents

a satirical cartoon on the problem of nepotism, in which the government official is referred

to using the language of a royal court.

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Figure 7: Tuoi Tre Cuoi’s Facebook page, 2018 December 19. A government official takes his son to a
fortune-teller. The fortune-teller says it doesn't matter which Chinese Zodiac sign he is, and he is always
the son of a "mandarin."

The depiction of the greedy corrupted mandarin/official as a big, fat person is well-

established in Vietnamese culture (Phan, 2003). However, there are some important changes

that should be noted. In the past, as Phan (2003) pointed out, the backward and ignorant poor

persons are often depicted as rats. Nowadays, the corrupt officials are the like of rats digging

holes and eating from the national budget (Figure 8).

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Figure 8: Tuoi Tre Cuoi’s Facebook page, 2018 November 12. The picture depicts the corrupted
officials as rats digging holes and eating from the national budget.

The corrupt officials are also likened to the images of insects, which appear to be small

and harmless but, in reality, cause all sorts of problems (Figure 9). The reference could be

drawn from Vietnamese culture in which many well-known idioms about insects are often

derogatory or pejorative. One instance is the phrase: “Con sâu làm rầu nồi canh” which

translates to “one worm ruins the whole pot.”

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Figure 9: Tuoi Tre Cuoi’s Facebook page, 2019 January 1. Corrupt officials are depicted as insects.

4.4. The willingness to represent corruption as a systemic problem

A notable development in Vietnamese political cartoon is the willingness to depict

corruption as a systemic problem. Phan (2003) argues that political cartoon in Vietnam tends

toward showing corruption is the result of only a few greedy and immoral behaviors as this

is the position of the ruling party as well. However, in recent years, there seem to be more

cartoons depicting this problem as systemic. Figures 8 and 9 are very clear examples. In

Figure 10, the dad and the son are having a conversation. The son asks the dad why the bald

and fat person is so rich. The dad tells him he is rich because his subordinates bribe him, and

the subordinates take bribe from his staffs. Somewhere along the line, the normal vendors
 40 of 72

have to bribe some government officials, which eventually leads to higher prices of goods.

In most of the conversation, the father assures his son that there is no connection to their life,

but when it comes to the hike of commodity prices, the father admits to the son he is wrong.

Figure 10: Tuoi Tre Cuoi’s Facebook page, 2017 December 19. Depiction of systemic corruption. A
dad and his son are having a conversation, in which, the son repeatedly asked at which level a bribery
will affect their livelihood.

Figure 11 below depicts the corruption in education as a systemic problem, in which

pressure for achievements from high-up the chain of command makes people within the

hierarchy pushes each other, leading to the incident of a teacher hitting her students.
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Figure 11: Tuoi Tre Cuoi’s Facebook page, 2018 December 1. Depiction of corruption in education as a
systemic problem. The higher authority in education forces the lower to “achieve,” which eventually
results in students getting hit by their teachers.

Figure 12: Tuoi tre cuoi, 2019 June 21. The corrupt force (the rats) bribes the anti-corrupt force (the cat)
with the envelope to notify them with the gold ring.
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Figure 12 shows another aspect of systematic corruption: law enforcement and corrupt

officials tend to work together. The cat represents anti-corruption law enforcement, the rats

symbolize corrupt officials. The rats bribe the cat by an envelope containing money and a

golden bell so that whenever the cat comes, the rats would be notified. Another aspect is

depicted in Figure 13, where an on-going race between the decision to prosecute some

politicians and the decision to retire is taking place. In the caption of the cartoon, the

cartoonist twitches a well-known proverb “được ăn cả, ngã về không” (if you win, you get

everything; if you fall, you lose everything) to “được ăn cả, ngã về hưu” (if you win, you get

everything; if you fall, you can fall back to retirement). This is to show that often corrupt

politicians were able to deploy the retire tactics to escape prosecution. Essentially, the artists

represent how a flawed system is being leveraged to allow corrupt people to get away with

their crimes.

Figure 13: Figure 13: Tuoi Tre Cuoi, 2019 July 3. If you win, you get everything; if you fall, you can
fall back to retirement. The cartoon portrayed the race between the official decision to prosecute (Quyet
dinh khoi to), which is held by the police, and the official decision to retire (Quyet dinh nghi huu).
 43 of 72

Another way the artists depict the “escape route” of corrupt politicians is the excuse of

following the correct procedure or protocol. Often, this excuse is often depicted as the magic

shield (Figure 14), protecting the politicians from all charges of nepotism or cronyism.

Figure 14: Tuoi Tre Cuoi, 2016 July 1. The excuse “assignment according to the correct protocol” is
being used as a magic shield to protect politicians from charges of nepotism and cronyism. In the
cartoon, the old man, likely to be a father or a family member, a assures the young man, who is assigned
a managerial role, that there is a magic shield.

Another way is the politician can escape charges is writing a letter of resignation, the

artist plays with the word “từ chức,” which means “to resign”, but “từ” also means slow in

Vietnamese (“từ từ”), hence, a letter of really slow resignation is depicted.

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Figure 15: Tuoi tre cuoi. 2019 June 21. A very slow resignation.

The anti-corruption campaign in Vietnam in 2019 was initiated by the General Secretary,

Nguyen Phu Trong, in which, he used the word “wood” for corrupt officials and “stove” for

the campaign. He specially emphasizes we need to keep the stove burning. Since then, the

“stove” has become a cultural reference point for the anti-corruption efforts. It is frequently

used by satirical cartoonist, Figure 16 and Figure 17 are clear cases.

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Figure 16: Tuoi tre cuoi, 2019 July 15. A corrupt official offers his dirty money for immunity from the
“stove”.
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Figure 17:Tuoi tre cuoi. 2019 Jan 04. Land is often captured, or “eaten”, by corrupted interest groups,
those who “overeat” it has to enter the “stove”—the party’s recent euphemism for the anti-corruption
campaign. There are many kinds of lands: public, planned, compensating, bidding, etc., which are often
“eaten” by the corrupted.

4.5. Depicting the people’s struggles and its political implications

People’s daily struggles is also a common topic for satirical cartoonist of Tuoi Tre Cuoi.

For example, the cartoonists often use humor to make fun of the rise in necessities such as

electricity (Figure 18), gas, and water; the lack of social upward mobility through education

(Figure 19); environmental problems; or bad traffics.

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Figure 18:Tuoi tre cuoi. 2019 June 20. A father told his son a man who sits in the dark is not about
being strong, but he is only scared of the electric bill.

Figure 19:Tuoi tre cuoi. 2019 July 16. Studying hard is no longer the way to get ahead in life: The
young man is thinking about the time when he studied hard while his parents equally cheered him on.
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4.6. Descriptive statistics of the random sample

The purpose of this quantitative analysis is to substantiate the observation of done in the

previous section, for example, the prevalence of auxiliary markers, the taboo of depicting

real people too realistically, etc. The descriptive statistics of the sample are presented in

Tables 1, 2, and 3.

Table 1: Distribution of generic versus individualistic depiction; the presence of auxiliary markers; the
presence of systemic corruption; the presence of traditional motifs; the presence of international motifs

Frequencies Percentage (%)

Generic 99 99%

Individualistic 1 1%

Auxiliary markers 100 100%

Systemic corruption 45 45%

Traditional motifs 29 29%

International elements 24 24%

In Table 1, it is clear that the observations on taboos, auxiliary markers, and willingness

to depict corruption as a systemic problem are backed up. Looking at the frequencies of the

generic depiction versus individualistic depiction, 99% of the cartoons use generic depiction

of people. The only case that uses caricatures of real-life public figures is presented in Figure

20 below. In this cartoon, the popular TV program that airs every Lunar New Year’s Eve is

referred to. And the actors of the program were recognizable.

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Figure 20: Tuoi Tre Cuoi, 2019 Feb 26. The meeting of the kitchen gods: The king of heaven is highly
pleased with the sports achievement of the country, meanwhile, the kitchen gods who take care of
education and economics are goofing around.

For auxiliary markers, 100% of the cartoons use verbal cues to guide the reading of the

audiences. 45% of the cartoons explicitly mention some rotten aspects of the political system,

which clearly shows there is a great willingness of the state-owned media outlet to use depict

corruption as a systemic problem.

It is somewhat more surprising that the artists use the traditional motifs and the

international elements to a similar degree (29% to 24%, respectively). Figure 21 shows an

example of Vietnamese cartoonists using the popular meme “rich kid” to make fun of the

situation of the rising cost of gas. It is quite common that whenever the government decides

to raise the price of gas, people will try to hoard as much as fuels as possible before the date.

In many ways, the rising cost of necessity goods is the common cause of political frustration

among Vietnamese people.

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Figure 21: Tuoi Tre Cuoi, 2018 October 15. Being a rich kid means hoarding a lot of gas and fuels.

Table 2: Distribution of target categories

Frequencies Percentage (%)

Morality 17 17%

Injustice 5 5%

Governance 45 45%

Daily struggle 33 33%

In Table 2, the percentage of the depiction of injustice is lowest with only 5%, while

governance is the problem most depicted at 45%. The second highest is the daily struggle

with 33%, followed by morality of government officials with 17%. With the failure of

governance and the daily struggle of the people being the most targeted subject of the political

cartoons, it implies a high willingness to point to systemic nature of the problems. In Figure

22, the competency of a government body is questioned, and the artist referred to the concept

of Industrial Revolution 4.0, popularized by Klaus Schwab (Schwab, 2017), which has

become a buzzword in Vietnamese media since 2017. Playing on the “4.0”, the artist says for
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a government body in Vietnam, 4.0 actually means zero listening, zero seeing, zero knowing,

and zero inspecting.

Figure 22: Tuoi Tre Cuoi, 2018 Sep 25. Vietnamese government and Industry 4.0: Zero listening, zero
seeing, zero knowing, and zero inspecting.

In Table 3 and Figure 23, we can see the distribution of the reactions to the cartoons on

Facebook. The one outliner case is the case where a cartoon (Figure 23) got more than 23,000

total social media reactions. A cartoon would get an average number of like of 3,381 and an

average number of total social media reaction of 3,635. As the two numbers are tracking each

other so closely, this suggests most of the reactions on Facebook are likes. Comments and

shares are less common, with the average being 46.34 and 207.24, respectively.
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Table 3: Distribution of the continuous variables

Min Max Mean SD

Likes 179 22,463 3,381 2,878.487

Comments 0 359 46.34 64.384

Shares 5 1,029 207.24 216.149

Total social media reaction 186 23,065 3,635 3,055.242

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(a)

(b)

(c)

Figure 23: The histograms of the distribution of total social media reactions (a), comments (b), and
shares (c).
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Figure 24: Tuoi Tre Cuoi, 2018 June 24. The whole family being government officials. An old man
walks into a town, and he finds every government building belongs to a family.
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Chapter 5: Discussion

This section discusses the meaning behind the changes and the continuity with the past

of the contemporary satirical cartoons. By invoking the framework presented in Figure 1 and

Figure 3, this section hopes to link the observations found in this thesis with the current

literature and the current socio-political situation in Vietnam.

Continuity with the past

This thesis has presented an analysis of the representation of corruption in Vietnam’s

political cartoon. Using the examples from a popular state-owned satirical magazine, this

study shows that the representation of corruption in Vietnam’s contemporary mass media

exhibits some continuity with its traditional historical characteristics. First, it is still a taboo

to depict high-profile politicians too realistically, though this taboo was once a subject of

satire (see Figure 4). When randomly sampling the cartoons of Tuoi Tre Cuoi, this study finds

that 99% of the time, the artists depict people in a generic manner. This is perhaps a result of

the conservative Confucian heritage, which has been a dominant force in Vietnamese culture

(Vuong et al., 2018). In this tradition, the issue of the “face” is almost a sacred value (Han,

2016). To compare with satirical cartoons in the West where caricatures of politicians and

public figures are common, there is a stark contrast in Vietnam – such caricatures are almost

non-existent in one of the most popular places for satirical cartoons in Vietnam. One is left

wondering, is this trait a reflection of the cultural differences? Or is this trait the results of

the censoring policy of the state? In a high-profile case such as the case of changing exam

scores of Son La province, a Northern province in Vietnam, or the case of Ocean Bank that

resulted in a national loss of VND 800 billion (US$ 34.5 million), there is no caricature of

people who get caught in the state-owned media. Yet, in the non-state-owned outlets or

private blogs such as baotiengdan.com or daichung10.blogspot.com, there are caricatures.

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However, the caricatures do not exaggerate some facial or bodily features like in many

satirical cartoons in the West. This suggests the taboos are both political and cultural.

Second, another continuity with the past is the heavy use of auxiliary markers and verbal

cues to guide and interpret the meaning of satirical cartoons. In the random sample, 100% of

the cartoons use verbal cues to guide the reading of the audiences. This observation suggests

that the strict political and media environment in Vietnam, to an extent, has made the artists

unwilling to take risks to let the audiences interpret the meaning freely. Another possible

explanation might be using the auxiliary markers is a strategy the editorials would use to

ensure that audiences from all kinds of demographics feel at ease understanding the cartoons.

Given the popularity of Tuoi Tre Cuoi, this economic aspect certainly makes sense.

Third, in terms of stereotypical representation of the corrupt official, the results show

that the artists continue to refer to many traditional elements of Vietnamese cultures such as

idioms, proverbs, folk songs, and folk literature. The quantitative analysis finds that

traditional motifs show up in 29% of the cartoons, while the international elements show up

in 24%. These are the results that capture the influence of economic and international

liberation which are shown in Figure 1. To go beyond the number, it is helpful to turn to

McAllister and Luckman (2015)’s analysis on the famous year-end TV comedy show, Tao

Quan (The Kitchen God). The authors show that the use of idioms, proverbs, folk songs, and

folk literature in this show conveys lessons and moral wisdom. The authors focus on the

contrast between the new, disorder, messy aspects of contemporary socio-political realities

and the orderliness of the values and beliefs sculpted into idioms and folklores. They showed

that this contrast is intensified and accentuated by comedic strategies. And the authors went

on and argued that through these contrasts, the show helps the audiences to remember the

past, to evoke in them a sense of Vietnamese identity, to think about the future, and how to
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set things right in a liminal period of a year: The Lunar New Year’s Eve. For McAllister and

Luckman (2015), this is essentially a critical reflection process.

In the case of daily satirical cartoons of Tuoi Tre Cuoi, although there is no liminal

moment that invites the audiences to contemplate the life of the nation, the way Tuoi Tre

Cuoi deploys satire seems to carry out the same function. For example, by referring to the

modern politicians as the mandarins, perhaps, they highlight the moral identity and moral

standard of the people who work as public servants as conceived by Confucian ethics. It has

been argued that moral legitimacy is of higher importance compared to constitutional

legitimacy in Vietnam, as state officials place special importance on their moral capacity to

govern and are consequently held accountable to the public standards of virtue (đức) (Endres,

2014). In the public discourse on the morality of public servants, the state often stresses the

importance of finding people with both talents or competency (tài) and moral virtue (đức).

The how and why of satirizing systematic corruption

More tolerant?

As documented in the results section, one of the major findings of this study is that there

is a willingness to depict corruption as a systemic problem. Analyzing this change along the

dimension of affect presented in the Materials and Methods section, it is a legitimate question

whether the change can be seen as evidence of an increasingly tolerant media and political

environment or a growing sense of cynicism among the public. Specifically, with a fast-

growing market economy that is increasingly embedded into the global network, a growing

influence of social media, a young tech-savvy population, does Vietnam’s media and political

environment become more tolerant, which results in the mainstream depiction of corruption

as systemic? Or does the Vietnamese public become more cynical and accepting that

corruption is a normal part of politics, hence, the frequent depiction of systemic corruption?
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Phan (2003) has noted corruption in Vietnam tends to be depicted as the problem of only

a few dishonest and greedy people, according to the official party line back then. However,

things have moved in the opposite direction, as can be seen in sections 4.3 and 4.4. First, in

terms of symbolism, a notable change is the image of the rat is now reserved for the corrupt

officials, while in the past, it is the poor and backward persons that were likened to the rats

(Phan, 2003). Second, as shown in section 4.4., as all sorts of different nuances of corruption

are being exposed and mocked in the satirical cartoons of Tuoi Tre Cuoi. There are a few

potential causes for this new willingness of satirizing systematic corruption. It is important

to keep in mind that Tuoi Tre Cuoi is actually a mouthpiece of the Ho Chi Minh branch of

the Communist Youth Union (Nguyen, 2012), which is under the control of the Communist

Party of Vietnam. From this fact, one can infer that there are changes in the way the party’s

view on corruption. It is a fact that the ruling party has intensified the quest to root out corrupt

members (Hung, 2018; Vuong, Vuong, Ho, & Nguyen, 2019), resulting in the prosecutions

of many high-profile politicians. Moreover, in many nationally televised events, the party has

always acknowledged the problem of corruption is rampant within all levels of the

government (Hayton, 2010). Perhaps, under this environment, the artists have found

themselves greater freedom and are more willing to produce arts that challenge corrupted

aspects of the current political system.

It will be amiss if the role of social media is overlooked. Past studies on social media in

Vietnam have indeed highlighted the upward trend in social activism and civic openness in

expressing opinions about political news. Sharbaugh and Nguyen (2014), in a study on the

online meme-making culture in Vietnam, have noted the unprecedented eagerness of the

citizens to openly discussing a scandal of the Ministry of Health, even a Facebook page

calling for the resignation of the Minister of Health achieved 105,000 likes. Another example

is “the case of 6,700 people for 6,700 trees,” which is well documented by Bui (2016) and
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Gillespie and Nguyen (2019). In this case, the movement started with social media. First, key

opinions leaders such as Tran Dang Tuan, a former senior government official, and Ngo Bao

Chau, a Fields medalist, who published open letters on their Facebook pages voicing

concerns historical and environmental loss as the results of the plan. Then a Facebook page

titled “6,700 people for 6,700 trees” was created on March 2015 to protest the plan Hanoi’s

local government’s plan to cut down old trees in the city. Activism in the digital network

quickly became activism in physical space where people spontaneously organized tree-

hugging events, tree-protecting walks or tying yellow knots to the trees. Hanoi authorities

eventually had to stop the plan and open an investigation on to the officials who carry it out,

and these officials were eventually disciplined on the ground that they violated current

regulations (Bui, 2016). Clearly, social media has had a liberating effect. It is possible that

under the effects of social media, and the globally integrated economy (Vuong, 2018),

Vietnam’s young, tech- and-media- savvy population (Minh-Nga, 2018) has experienced a

change in sensibility. As a result, they are more likely to enjoy a more nuanced depiction of

corruption. Instead of pinning down the problem of corruption onto a few bad people, the

consumers of Tuoi Tre Cuoi have become more sophisticated and come to enjoy a more

holistic viewpoint. This, in turn, generates a market pressure on the artists of Tuoi Tre Cuoi—

a state-owned outlet, yet must survive the economic reform all the same.

This narrative of how things changed is indeed optimistic. It makes a case this change in

the art form reflects of a shift in the political orientation of the country towards a more open,

democratic, free environment, which reflects the 3Blue-and-1Red dynamics captured in

Figure 1. The interplay of a globalized market economy, a rich tradition of satire, the

penetration of social media in people’s lives, and the rule of the one-party state produce a

more open media environment that tolerates a more straightforward discussion of corruption.

Nonetheless, is it all?
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More cynical?

As much as one is encouraged by the signs of growing tolerance and openness in

Vietnam’s politics, one should be proportionately cautious with the worrying trend that social

media is also used to manipulate the public. Bui (2016) has noted, although, in a sense, social

media has opened up a new political space for participation of Vietnamese people, the high-

profile cases of cyberactivism are all highly emotionally charged. Hence, he admonished:

“Meaningful participation to influence the political process on social issues at a broader

and deeper level requires more than just the spontaneous reactions and emotions of the

participants in cyberspace. Trust and respect among the people interacting on the social

media are often not the rules of game.” (Bui, 2016, p. 107)

As social media can be co-opted by political actors to serve their specific political

purpose, so is political satire. One can interpret the growing willingness to present corruption

as a systemic problem in satirical cartoons as a sign of increasing media and political

openness, yet, the frequency and the repetition of this theme can be a worrying sign of

growing cynicism too. Moreover, as demonstrated in section 4.5, there are frequent cartoons

about daily struggles of Vietnamese people that hint at something politically rotten: quickly

damaged expensive infrastructure, rising utility bills, lacking social upward mobility, lacking

jobs, questionable education programs, etc. It raises a question whether that is a sign of a

growing apathy among the audiences of Tuoi Tre Cuoi’s satirical cartoons. It is a justifiable

concern among the scholars on the effects of political satire that instead of making the

viewers more politically active, it actually makes the audiences more cynical and fragmented

(Colletta, 2009; Hart & Hartelius, 2007; Miazhevich, 2015). Subject to the differences in

designs and presumptions of experimental studies, the empirical literature remains

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inconclusive whether the consumption of political satire increases activism or cynicism (Shao

& Liu, 2018).

Here it is important to question the nature of the presumed causal relationship. Perhaps

activism or cynicism is dependent on other circumstantial factors other than the level of

exposure to and consumption of political satire. For example, in a discussion of petty

corruption between Vietnamese state officials and small-scale dealers at the border of

Vietnam and China, Endres (2014) shows the local traders both feel that bribery gives them

a better opportunity for businesses, yet, “the corrupt exception likewise pushes them into a

de facto illegality where they remain subjected to arbitrary “lawmaking” and excluded from

legal protection.” In other words, this is an example of a dynamics, in which, both the citizens

and the government officials cynically goes beyond the provision of the existing law to

negotiate a deal that benefits them both. If cynicism is inherent in the governing process and

how the citizen interacts with it, then perhaps, the only appropriate response is to make jokes

about the system. While the jokes might not inspire any immediate changes, they can still

contribute to the education of the scale and scope of the problems and a certain degree of

vigilance among the people about the system’s and the people’s follies and hypocrisy.

Collective reflection and social solidarity

Being caught up in the debate whether political satire produces a higher level of political

engagement or cynical attitude among the citizens, one can overlook the two other

dimensions of the possible effects of political satire: learning and social solidarity (See Figure

3). Viewed from the dimension of affect and activism, political satire’s effects on its

audiences are controversial. Viewed from the other two dimensions, the effects appear to be

more tangible.
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In fact, there are both theoretical and empirical works that support the learning effects of

political satire. For example, Hall (2014) argues for a “satirical vision of politics,” in which

he examines the use of satire since Aristophanes and proposes satire can be an instrument for

political education and provides a robust foundation, ontologically and epistemologically, for

a theory in International Relations. Hayes (2016) explores how satire can fit into public

affairs classroom and facilitate education of critical pedagogy. Hayes points out that in public

affairs education, students are expected to be familiar with systematic and institutional

problems in society, and that can have melancholic effects. Hence, satire can be harnessed as

a delivery device to help capture student’s attention, at the same time, ease them into more

difficult conversations about social problems. Previous experimental studies suggest political

comedy can provide a gateway to learning about political situations in traditional news

(Becker & Bode, 2018). Clearly, exposure to political satire can be positive for the audiences

in terms of political education. This learning process can be amplified by social media to

become a form of collective reflection, which, as shown by research on Chinese online satire

practice (Szablewicz, 2014; Yang & Jiang, 2015; Yang et al., 2015), can enhance social

solidarity.

In this study, the investigation of the representation of corruption in contemporary

political cartoon in Vietnam does resonate with the observation of McAllister and Luckman

(2015) when they analyze the popular 15-years-old satirical TV show called Tao Quan (The

Kitchen God): the show has fulfilled its two-fold task—entertaining a large audience and

offering a critical reflection on the life of the nation at the liminal time of the Lunar New

Year’s Eve. Whether or not Vietnam’s contemporary political satirical cartoon can be

considered a form of political engagement is a debatable subject, as shown by the analysis of

McAllister and Luckman (2015), similar to The Kitchen God, Tuoi Tre Cuoi’s satirical

cartoons can be a venue both for political entertainment and reflection in a daily basis. With
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the transition of Tuoi Tre Cuoi into social media platforms, the interactive nature of social

media can support a transformation of online satire into an everyday networked practice. And

as shown by de Certeau (1984), all everyday practices are tactical in nature and thus form a

kind of creative resistance to the oppression of the dominant political forces.

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Chapter 6: Concluding Remarks

It has been observed all over the world that changes in networking technology and

modern political environment can bring about changes in the way political satire is deployed.

Arguably, the act of producing, consuming, sharing, commenting on online satirical contents

should be discussed within the context of the rise of social media, the increasing penetration

of the Internet, and the rapidly changing global politics. This thesis has looked at online

satirical cartoons of the state-owned media outlet--Tuoi Tre Cuoi in Vietnam. Studying the

contents and forms the satirical cartoons of Tuoi Tre Cuoi have shed a light on how the

dynamics of economic liberation, international integration, social media and Internet

penetration, and the one-party state (Figure 1) has produced changes the art of political satire.

The current study also reflects on how the practice of political satire and satirical cartoons

continues using traditional motifs and elements. However, the thesis is not exempt from

limitations, which can be addressed in future research. First, this study, as it stands now, is

lacking theoretical contribution to the literature. In future studies, conceptual frameworks

that have been used in recent works such as the symbolic power (Tang & Yang, 2011),

infrapolitics (Yang et al., 2015), “structure of feelings” (Szablewicz, 2014), or aesthetic

public sphere (Jacobs & Wild, 2013) can be examined and discussed in the context of

Vietnam’s online satire. Moreover, the random sample can be expanded to cover the entire

period Tuoi Tre Cuoi published its cartoons on Facebook, from January 2015 until now.

Future works can also look at other platforms of satirical cartoons in Vietnam besides the

Tuoi Tre Cuoi to widen the research materials. As this work has laid the groundwork for

coding or datifying the cartoons, widening the research materials and sample will help the

quantitative analysis become more in-depth and rigorous.

Within the current scope, however, this research has met its objectives: identifying the

recent changes and the historical continuity in the practice of political satirical cartoon in
 65 of 72

Vietnam, and providing for the first time a quantitative method to analyze content and form

of satirical images in this context. Its findings, therefore, do add to the literature on graphic

representations of corruption. Using both the qualitative and quantitative method, this study

finds that although subjecting to huge economic pressure and a more tech-savvy, Western-

media-literate audiences, Tuoi Tre Cuoi’s satirical cartoons still refrain from depicting public

figures and politicians realistically. This taboo is made fun of in Tuoi Tre Cuoi’s own cartoon

in 1999 (Figure 4), but it seems this liberal turn never fully materializes. The endurance of

this trend, as analyzed in the Discussion section, might be partly due to censoring policy of

the government, and partly due to political as well as cultural self-censoring. Even the more

liberal and Western-friendly media outlets only publish cartoons with very little exaggeration

of facial and bodily features compared with the real people. With unflattering depiction of

real-life politicians are almost non-existent, it implies the taboo will be here to stay. Another

notable continuity with the past is the pervasive use of auxiliary markers. It is still an open

question whether this is the result of a strict media environment, where artists do not want to

take risk letting the audiences interpret the cartoons for themselves, or whether with so few

competitors on satirical cartoons, Tuoi Tre Cuoi never needs to evolve its art as the magazine

only needs to make sure readers from all demographics can feel at ease interpreting the art

works.

The most significant change is the observation that there is a greater willingness to

represent corruption as a systemic problem. A closer examination into this matter suggests

the media environment might become more tolerant of the globalized market economy and

the rise of social media, yet, the consumer might become cynical or apathetic. A more

optimistic outlook is that although the same political problems (incompetent and immoral

government officials, mismanagement, nepotism, lacking check and balance, etc.) occur and

being rendered into satirical cartoons, the daily exposure to this art form will still serve useful
 66 of 72

purposes for social justice: collective reflection and social solidarity (see Figure 3). As

demonstrated by many previous studies on the education and efficacy effects of exposure to

political satire, one should not underestimate the power of humor and comedy. As suggested

by Chattoo (2019), comedy can influence social justice in many ways: “attracting attention,

persuasion, offering a way into complex issues, dissolving social barriers, and encouraging

message sharing.”

It is clear that political humor can be the source of many contradicting states of mind: it

can persuade us to take action or to sit back and shrug at the world’s problems. Yet, to only

conceive of the power of political satire in these two extremes would deprive us of seeing

this art form as the catalyst for learning, critical reflection, and social solidarity. The

philosopher Thomas Nagel famously writes about the absurdity of human existence in a

journal article titled “The absurd”:

“If a sense of the absurd is a way of perceiving our true situation (then what reason can we

have to resent or escape it? Like the capacity for epistemological skepticism, it results from

the ability to understand our human limitations. It need not be a matter for agony unless we

make it so. Nor need it evoke a defiant contempt of fate that allows us to feel brave or proud.

Such dramatics, even if carried on in private, betray a failure to appreciate the cosmic

unimportance of the situation. If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that

anything matters, then that doesn't matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with

irony instead of heroism or despair.” (Nagel, 1971)

Nagel argues our sense of our life being absurd arises from our ability to view things

from a broader perspective: to view ourselves stripped of any presuppositions and see that

had we been constituted differently, the seriousness with which we take our life would not

be so serious. He offers us irony as a cure for this feeling of the absurd. In the case of satirical

cartoons in Vietnam, this lesson can be applied, allowing us to reflect on the mismatch
 67 of 72

between aspiration and reality of Vietnam political system through political satire should not

throw one into despair or arouse one into heroism. Perhaps a sense of proportion and a satiric

vision of politics should be counted as a triumph.

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