The Internet and the Grassroots Foundation of Civil Society in Indochina

Abstract

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