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Connected Countryside: The Inhibiting Effect of Social Media on Rural Social
Movements
Paul Schuler
Assistant Professor
University of Arizona
Mai Truong
Ph.D Candidate
University of Arizona
While much research focuses on social media and urban movements, almost no research
explores its potentially divergent effects in rural areas. Building on recent work emphasizing
the multidimensional effects of online communication on vertical and horizontal information,
we argue that while the Internet may facilitate urban movements, it inhibits rural movements.
Because social media increases vertical information flows between government and citizens,
the central government responds quickly to rural protests, preventing such protests from
developing into a large-scale movement. By contrast, social media does less to change the
vertical information flows in urban areas. We explore the plausibility of our argument by
process tracing the evolution of protests in urban and rural areas in Vietnam in the pre-and
post-Internet eras. Our theory addresses a critically overlooked effect of social media within
authoritarian regimes.
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What enables isolated protests to grow into social movements in authoritarian regimes? How
do the Internet and social media help or hinder these movements? Scholars of authoritarian regimes,
democratic transitions, and social movements have long been concerned with the factors that lead to
organized, anti-government resistance in authoritarian contexts.1 The theories emphasize a wide range
of personal, social, institutional, geographic, and economic factors.2 With the increasing importance
of the Internet in nearly all but the most isolated authoritarian countries,3 a wave of research examines
the degree to which the Internet and social media inhibits or enables anti-regime collective action.
However, most of this research focuses on the impact of the Internet on urban movements such as the
Arab Spring4 or movements in other new democracies.5 Perhaps surprisingly, despite the traditional
focus within social movement theory on agrarian protests, very little focuses on the impact of the
Internet on rural movements.
This is an important oversight for two reasons. First, although data quality on rural protests in
the pre-Internet era in rural areas in authoritarian regimes remains sparse and inconsistent, evidence
from Vietnam and China suggests the size of rural protests has declined in rural areas as they have
gained access to the Internet. Data from China shows that rural protests of more than 20,000 citizens
occurred in Yuandu in 20006 and Hanyuan in 2004,7 but similarly large protests have not occurred
since 2010 when more than 20% of rural population in China gained access to the Internet.8 While
land protests remain frequent, they are smaller in size. Similar patterns exist in Vietnam. There were
major protests in Thai Binh and Dong Nai in 1997 attracting more than 40,000 and 10,000
participants respectively.9 Similarly, in 2001 and 2004 more than 10,000 took to the streets in the
Central Highlands protesting land acquisitions. Since 2010, despite the frequent small-scale
uprisings, no rural protests on a similar scale have occurred.
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Understanding the roots of these large rural movements is important because while not all
movements will be directed against the regime, as other research shows, collective action of any kind
can pose a threat. This is because seemingly non-threatening large movements might have adverse
consequences for the legitimacy of autocratic governments.10 This explains why autocrats go to great
lengths to pre-empt collective action that might otherwise seem harmless.11 For example, the Chinese
government harshly suppressed the apolitical Falun Gong movement that focuses on stretching and
mediation exercises, precisely because the government feared that the ability to engage in collective
action could be turned against the party.12
Given the importance of social movements, this paper provides a theory that may explain the
lack of rural movements in the Internet age. We theorize that contrary to urban areas, where social
media may facilitate sudden, large-scale anti-regime movements, the same technology may reduce
the likelihood of seeing such movements in the countryside through the ability of the regime to target
“real time” repression and concessions. If social media disproportionately hinders rural movements,
this has important implications for the type of organizations that challenge authoritarian rule, shape
autocratic politics, and possibly shape a post-transition environment.
The theory in this paper builds on existing work on the impact of the Internet on social
movements. Consistent with recent work, we emphasize the multidimensional effects that the Internet
can have on horizontal communication between citizens as well as vertical communication to and
from the citizenry to the regime.13 Additionally, our theory emphasizes the difference between
“virtual” and “conventional” civil society, where the Internet may facilitate spontaneous movements
that can topple regimes without creating an organized infrastructure that can manage the post-
transition order.14
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Where we differ is that we theorize that social media will have different effects in rural and
urban areas. Our theory rests on key differences between urban and rural areas in terms of horizontal
and vertical communication networks. We argue that prior to the Internet, both urban and rural areas
faced challenges in developing horizontal communication between citizens to challenge regimes.
However, rural areas had fewer vertical links to the state, thus allowing rural grievances to fester.
Furthermore, the ability of local governments to block information from reaching the center kept
central authorities in the dark about rural grievances, thus preventing a response. Therefore, the
advent of the Internet more dramatically increases vertical communication between the center and
citizens in rural areas than urban areas. Horizontally, the Internet facilitates greater communication
between citizens in urban and rural areas. However, rural movements face a disadvantage in
translating the increased horizontal communication into large scale collective action due to lower
population density.15 Therefore, social movements in rural areas still require conventional
organization. The combined effect of these differences is that Internet access increases the likelihood
of anti-regime social movements in urban areas but decreases it in rural areas.
Ideally, we would support our argument using data on the size of rural protests before and
after the introduction of social media in rural areas under authoritarian rule. However, due to
concerns about data reliability and reporting bias, initial examination of the theory requires deep case
knowledge to access native language sources. This is because international accounts, even in the
cases we examine, miss certain events entirely or dramatically underestimate their size.16 Indeed,
consistent with our theory, the Chinese government did somewhat successfully attempt to hide the
massive but “hidden” Hanyuan protests from the international media.17 It is hard to imagine that in
today’s social media environment, a protest of more than 20,000 such as the Hanyuan “incident”
would not generate widespread attention through images and videos sent over the Internet.
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Because of these concerns with data reliability and because of the rare event nature of social
movements, as an initial effort to support our argument, this paper engages in a process tracing
exercise of two plausibly comparable instances of rural protests, where one grew into an organized
movement and the other did not. Specifically, using a little-known Vietnamese government
postmortem report on protests from the 1990s, we examine two cases of rural protest in Vietnam: one
occurring in the pre-Internet era in 1997 and the other occurring in the post-Internet era in 2017. As
we discuss below, both of these rural protests started with grievances over land disputes with local
officials. However, the 1997 Thai Binh protests ultimately grew in size and organization until the
protests finally mobilized more than 40,000 participants engaging in large-scale, province-wide
movement with developed organization networks. By contrast, in 2017, protests in a rural area of
Hanoi dissipated when the central government moved in to immediately calm the situation and
placate the protesters. Our analysis demonstrates how the increased vertical information flows
facilitated by the Internet from the periphery to the center in 2017 compared to 1997 inhibited the
growth of a movement in the former but not the latter.
We also discuss how the Internet plays a different role in urban movements. Using secondary
sources, we show that strong vertical communications between urban dissidents and government
elites as well as weak horizontal linkages prevented protests from forming prior to the Internet.
However, using the case of urban protests in 2015 against a proposed scheme to cut trees, we show
how these dynamics unleashed by social media have contrasting effects in urban environments.
Consistent with findings from the Middle East and Eastern Europe, the protests were not led by any
particular civil society organization, but instead a loose network of connected citizens. However,
because of the sheer population density, these protests presented a greater challenge despite the lack
of organization. While protests in Dong Tam and Thai Binh required conventional organization,
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protests in urban Hanoi took advantage of “virtual” civil society to mobilize large scale, spontaneous
protests. In making our argument, we also consider how recent anti-China protests, which did spread
to areas outside of the major urban centers, are consistent with our theory.
The theory and case studies contained in this paper should be of interest to scholars working
in several lines of inquiry. First, they will be relevant to a vast literature on the importance of social
media in authoritarian and democratic contexts. Our study coheres with recent work emphasizing the
multidimensional effects of the Internet, while adding a critical neglected dimension of the divergent
urban and rural effects. Additionally, our theory and findings have implications for the study of
authoritarian and post-authoritarian successor regimes more broadly. If the patterns we theorize
extend outside of Vietnam, it suggests that the composition of coalitions toppling autocrats will look
different today than in the past. Whereas in the past, regimes may have faced revolts from organized
groups with strong rural bases of support, today’s movements will largely build on loosely organized
movements consisting of urban coalitions.
Social Movements and Social Media
Before proceeding, we should first clarify our primary outcome of interest. This paper focuses
on the impact of social media on large-scale rural movements challenging authoritarian elites. From
the outset, we should distinguish this concept from revolution, which implies something of the
substance of the social movement. Revolutions are social movements, but not all social movements
are revolutionary. This is because social movements may or may not seek to upend social
structures.18 We should also distinguish social movements from protests. In this paper, we think of
protests as small-scale events, where social movements are larger. Of course, a precise delineation
between the two is impossible and not necessary for our argument. At a conceptual level, we are
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concerned with cases where small-scale protests encompassing only a few hundred people swell into
the thousands and where coordination across participants’ villages and districts occurs. Social
movements can only occur when participants sustain collective actions such as cycles of protests for a
long period of time though some kind of organizational structure created specifically for the
movement.19 Finally, as noted above, these movements need not be explicitly aimed at overthrowing
the regime, but should make some demands from either the local or central government.
What explains rural social movements? While most literature does not compare urban and
rural areas, a large literature considers movements more generally. This work focuses on the nature of
class consciousness and the nature of peasant rationality.20 Others focus on the presence of local
community structures and the degree to which these underlying community norms are threatened by
extra-communal elites.21 An underlying similarity shared in this work is that even when peasants
have an economic self-interest in protesting, this can often be thwarted, either by impediments to
collective action, false consciousness, or deference to community hierarchy.22 Research on civil wars
may also help explain social movements. One prominent finding from civil war research is that civil
wars are more likely in areas with rugged terrain.23 The underlying logic is that where citizens are
harder to monitor, their ability to foment organized protests will increase. External political
opportunity structures can also affect the occurrence of peasant protests.24 This literature suggests
that peasants exploit changes in formal institutional environment to form collective action.
How does social media impact the growth of protests into movements? Early work on social
media and anti-regime resistance falls into two camps. One camp, the “liberation” theorists, suggests
that Internet technology could imperil autocrats by undermining their ability to monopolize the
distribution of information25 and facilitating collective action.26 Even those that are more suspicious
of the democratizing aspects of the Internet suggest that the Internet does at least facilitate brief
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episodes of intense collective action.27 Techno-pessimists, on the other hand, argue that the Internet
and social media provide the regime with formidable new tools with which to strengthen their rule.
Several studies from China show how it uses the Internet to blunt collective action,28 flood the
Internet it with pro-regime propaganda,29 and provide information to the regime.30
Recent work on social media and protests takes a more nuanced approach.31 Invoking political
communication theory, which stresses the distinction between horizontal information flows between
the public and vertical information from the regime to citizens,32 this work suggests that the Internet
may have multidimensional effects. On one hand, it can increase reciprocal information flows
between citizens and regime elites. This may empower the regime vis-à-vis the population. However,
it will also democratize horizontal information networks between citizens. This democratization can
have multiple effects such as empowering extremist groups that neither the regime nor citizens
approves of 33 or increasing the centrality of more peripheral, dispassionate actors.34
Theory: “Real Time Repression and Concessions”
While compelling, existing work does not consider the potentially divergent impact of social media
on urban and rural movements. To develop our theory, we consider how social media impacts
political information flows. To do this we use existing literature to generate a stylized model of
political communication that builds upon the idea that communication flows in different directions.35
Using this framework, we then show how social media will impact political communication flows in
urban versus rural areas in authoritarian regimes in the pre-and post-Internet era.
Before proceeding, we should first note how we distinguish rural and urban areas. In his study
of contentious politics in authoritarian regimes, Slater defines urban unrest as conflicts occurring in
major urban centers that “upper groups called home.”36 Given the importance of regime leaders being
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embedded in society to our theory, we use a similar conceptualization. With this conceptualization,
our theory builds on the idea that political information flows horizontally between citizens and
vertically between citizens and the government.37 As Figure 1 depicts, vertical information from
citizens to the central government takes place either directly or indirectly. Television and radio are
potential channels through which the center can directly transmit information to the local level.
Similarly, certain grassroots institutions can allow citizens to communicate directly such as petitions,
access to the media, or in some cases travelling directly to the capital to present their opinions.
Government officials may also gain information directly with citizens through their
embeddedness into social networks and society.38 In this case, the central government can directly
observe citizens’ grievances.39 Vertical information may also travel indirectly through local
government intermediaries. For instance, to disseminate information about a new policy, the central
government may rely on local government agents. Similarly, central officials will often rely on local
governments to obtain information about issues of concern to citizen, information on potential
collective actions, and public opinions of policy implementation.40 As recent work shows, local
governments may only selectively report such information upward.41 Therefore, autocrats attempt to
establish alternative channels to address informational problems, such as allowing small-scale
protests, partially free media, limited public communication and limited public participation.42
Vertical information flows are critical to rural social movements. If the center lacks
information on what is occurring at the local level, either because they cannot access the information
directly or because the local government fails to provide it, this reduces the ability of the center to
respond to movements with either concessions or repression. Furthermore, central governments may
lack the ability to communicate directly to certain areas. As such, a lack of vertical communication
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should increase the possibility of movements due to of lack of response from the center or an inability
to disseminate propaganda.
Alongside vertical communication, horizontal communication flows are also crucial to social
movements. However, contrary to vertical communication, horizontal communication should
increase the propensity for social movements. Constraints on collective action constitute a primary
impediment to social movements in an authoritarian regime.43 Collective action ultimately depends
on horizontal information flows, where citizens can communicate both that they share the same ideas
and that they are willing to challenge the regime.44 Horizontal information can take the form of face-
to-face contact, civil society groups, social media, or rumors.45
Horizontal information flows are restricted in authoritarian regimes because of intense state
intervention in public political spaces.46 Critically, the utility of these horizontal information flows
depends on the expected number of other individuals that will respond within a given geographical
area. With greater numbers, the risk to the individual is less. This has important implications for the
rural-urban divide. As Wallace notes, in dense urban areas, a certain percentage of individuals (say 1
percent) within a certain geographical radius may coalesce into a larger crowd than the same
percentage in a rural area.47 This will create greater safety in numbers in an urban area, thus
magnifying the effect of any increase in horizontal communication.
To summarize, stronger horizontal communication increases the chance of protests growing
into a movement, while stronger vertical communication decreases the chance of such a progression.
Furthermore, the impact of horizontal communication will be a function of the number of people that
can be mobilized in large numbers spontaneously without organization or leadership.
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Figure 1: Stylized Model of Political Communication
Hypotheses
Applying this framework to urban and rural settings, we argue that the Internet will impact
vertical information flows more than in rural areas than urban areas. Additionally, the Internet will
increase horizontal information flows in both urban and rural areas. However, because of the
increased population density in urban areas, this will facilitate collective action to a greater degree in
urban than rural areas. The net effect is that the Internet will facilitate social movements in urban
areas but inhibit them in rural areas.
Starting with urban areas, given strong state interventions in political public space, horizontal
communication networks in urban areas in the pre-Internet age were weak. As such, information
spread between citizens largely through face-to-face communication. Mobilization strategies,
therefore, relied heavily on face-to-face communication mechanisms such as rumors, pamphlets,
manifestos spread from person to person.48 Additionally, during the pre-Internet era, vertical
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communication was relatively strong because dissidents were more likely to be embedded into elite
government societal networks compared to potential rural malcontents. Furthermore, government
officials, living within the urban areas, could directly observe discontent.
The weak horizontal networks and relatively strong vertical networks placed two restraints on
potential social movements. First, overcoming this horizontal information challenges requires strong
organizations with identified leadership, clear strategies and high trust among members.49
Furthermore, because of direct vertical communication, the central government was able to observe
such an organization, thus pre-empting and quickly intervening in collective action. Given these
features, the rise of social media should increase horizontal information flows in urban areas. First, in
authoritarian regimes the interactive nature of social media undermines autocratic leaders’
conventional tools to intervene in political public space.50 Second, social media can supplant
traditional face-to-face communication in that it can connect people and can disseminate information
to many people across a wide area in a short period of time.51 We argue that these effects coupled
with high population density in urban areas lead to spontaneous mobilization of a large number of
people to the streets without a conventional organization. This is because the high density gives
respondents confidence that coordination will lead to a critical mass of protesters, such that a
movement can form. Wallace argues that protesters in Tehran in 2009 and Cairo in 2011 made up a
small percent of the population of the cities but autocrats found it extremely challenging to handle the
protests.52
Hypothesis 1: Internet access increases the likelihood of social movements in urban areas by
increasing horizontal communication without a similarly large increase in vertical
information flows.
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Moving to rural areas, horizontal communication will be similarly weak in the pre-Internet
area. However, in contrast to urban areas, vertical information flows were limited in the pre-Internet
era because rural citizens and the central government did not communicate directly.53 This made local
governments the main channel of policy implementation and information dissemination.54
Unfortunately for the central government, relying on the local government to spot collective action
may not be a reliable tool.55 While local governments certainly have an incentive to quell the protests,
if grievances result from misconduct by local authorities, they will likely attempt to falsely report
information on protests or block information from reaching the center. However, this puts the local
government in a dilemma. Once tensions occur, the local government will be reluctant to request
assistance from the center for fear that they would be harshly punished. But, at the same time, their
limited resources may inhibit their ability to respond to the protests. An ineffective attempt to
respond either by concession or repression would afford protests an opportunity to grow. Heurlin’s
book supports this argument, showing that the scope and intensity of land dispute protests in rural
China are more likely to escalate after the local government fails to provide satisfactory
compensation or repress them.56 Because the center is misinformed, unaware of protests, or simply
receives too much information, they are only likely to intervene when protests become large. For
these reasons, the central government may fail to intervene in rural protests at an early stage, even as
the local government ineffectively attempts to squash them.
Delayed intervention from the central government is critical to the development of rural
movements because this helps protesters to overcome weak horizontal information flows and
incubate a large-scale movement. Similar to pre-Internet urban areas, horizontal networks of
communication in rural areas were weak because of the state’s strong interventions in political public
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space. Lower population density in rural areas inhibited horizontal information flows further, placing
a limit on the number of people mobilized through face-to-face communication. This means that
strong organizations with identified leadership and mutual trust formed the basis for peasant
protests.57 If the central government did not intervene in a timely fashion, such an organization could
expand and gradually mobilize peasants to participate in protests.
Relative to urban areas, social media significantly changes vertical information flows in rural
areas. Vertically, social media facilitates direct communication between rural citizens and the central
government, thus, weakening the role of the local government in supplying information.58 Therefore,
if rural protests occur due to the local governments’ wrongdoing, social media will reduce the ability
of local authorities to falsely report or block information from reaching the central leaders. Through
social media, the central government becomes aware of the protests at an earlier stage, thus allowing
them to deploy their more substantial resources in real time through either concession or repression.
The Internet can even afford the central government an opportunity to learn about rural
protests in the most remote areas. With the assistance of cell phones, people in those areas can access
the Internet more easily. The fact that many autocrats attempt to provide mobile Internet to the most
remote areas of the country may indicate that autocratic governments are strengthening their capacity
to monitor citizens in even the most rural regions. For example, the government of Vietnam supplies
mobile Internet to 95% of the population in diverse geographic conditions including remote islands
and mountainous areas.59 Additionally, urban dissidents may also observe initial protests and
publicize the issue, further increasing the possibility that the center will become aware of the issue.
These factors lead to early interventions from the central government, which reduces the
ability for protesters to overcome horizontal networks of communication and incubate a large-scale
movement. Additionally, as compared to urban areas, social media does not have the same
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transformative effects on rural horizontal information flows because of low population density. One
percent of rural population taking to the streets results in much smaller number of protesters than one
percent in urban areas, which should discourage people in rural areas from joining protests.
Overcoming this challenge also requires a conventional organization. But early interventions from the
central government may reduce the chances for such an organization to grow and mobilize protesters.
Hypothesis 2: Social media decreases the likelihood of social protests in rural areas by
increasing vertical information flows from the central government to citizens without a
similarly large benefit from increased horizontal flows of information.
Research Design and Case Studies
To test our theory, ideally, we would seek perfectly comparable rural and urban environments, some
with access to the Internet and some without. However, because access to the Internet is so dependent
on time and space, it is difficult to find true counterfactuals. In this study, we are primarily concerned
with theory building, saving a more rigorous test for future work. Instead, we demonstrate the
plausibility of our argument through the process tracing of actual and potential movements in urban
and rural areas in Vietnam.60
In order to keep the cases as comparable as possible, we turn to Vietnam and compare the
rural Thai Binh peasant protest (see Appendix 1 for a timeline) and the Dong Tam land dispute
protest (see Appendix 2 for a timeline), which took place in 1997 and 2017 respectively. Despite
being one of the most developed agricultural provinces in Vietnam in 1997, Thai Binh witnessed
large-scale riots centered on rural land and governance issues in 1997.61 At the heart of the unrest was
a series of grievances concerning corruption, land seizures, and the massive wealth of local cadres.62
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The summit of the crisis was an extremely violent clash between local authorities and villagers on
June 26 and 27 in 1997, where thousands of villagers throughout the province converged on Quynh
Phu district, attacked local authorities and policemen and destroyed and burned government
buildings, local officials’ private houses, and party symbols. Over the course of the protests, more
than 43,000 participated, thus indicating that the protests moved beyond a small-scale protest to a
full-fledged movement.
In Dong Tam, villagers in rural Hanoi protested against the revocation of 59 acres of land
covering three communes of Chuong My district, as well as the Dong Tam commune in My Duc
District, rural Hanoi.63 In 2014, the local government cleared residents from the land, which was then
allocated to Vietnam’s largest state-run telecommunication corporation. Some residents believed that
local officials sold the land for an illegal profit and used the local budget to compensate households
that were forced to leave.64 The first protest occurred on April 15, 2017, when Dong Tam villagers
detained 38 local officials after local officials arrested four representatives of the village. Ultimately,
the protests died down and did not grow beyond Dong Tam commune, even to the other affected
areas in Chuong My district.
While the two events happened twenty years apart, both the Thai Binh and Dong Tam protests
were rooted in dissatisfaction with corruption and land disputes at the local level. Additionally,
because the two protests occurred in rural areas in northern Vietnam, cultural, linguistic, ethnic and
political factors that could have affected the behavior of protesters and the response of the state are
largely similar. Finally, although Dong Tam occurred in the Hanoi area, it is still a case of rural
protest. My Duc used to be a district of Hay Tay, a rural province that merged with Hanoi in 2008.
Therefore, the district is still classified as rural. We argue that the outcome of the protests diverged
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because of the timing of the central government’s interventions, and that the presence of social media
affected this process.
To conclude our analysis, we also look at patterns of urban protest. First, we examine patterns
of urban protest in pre-Internet Vietnam. Unfortunately, the lack of protests, potentially due to the
dynamics we discuss, combined with less information does not allow us to discuss a case in
particular. However, we do use secondary literature to discuss how linkages between the government
and urban dissidents likely squashed the growth of any dissidence into a full-fledged movement. We
then compare this with the Internet age and the tree movement that occurred in urban Hanoi in 2015
(see Appendix 3 for a timeline). The tree movement, which protested the felling of thousands of trees
in Hanoi, was one of the largest urban movements in Vietnam.65 Consistent with the more robust
literature on social movements in urban areas, our analysis of urban movements emphasizes how
social media dramatically transformed horizontal information flows without impacting vertical
networks in urban areas.
Thai Binh Unrest: From Small Peaceful Protests to a Social Movement
Turning to Thai Binh, to show how the lack of social media blocked information flows, we
rely heavily on findings from a report delivered by a Prime Ministerial search team in the aftermath
of the protest.66 The English analysis of the Vietnamese language report by Hai Hong Nguyen67
shows that consistent with recent work by Pan and Chen the local government might have restricted
the dissemination of information on initial protests.68 First, when protests were small and peaceful,
local authorities simply ignored the protesters’ demand by making shallow promises and refusing to
take responsibility. For example, they told protesters that the corrupt local authorities were not typical
of the government and that their concerns would be addressed in a short time. When failures to
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address villagers’ complaints led to increasingly violent and large protests in mid-May 1997, the local
government deployed local police to suppress the protests, spread negative narratives about protests
on Thai Binh television and prosecuted protest leaders.
Surprisingly, even when local efforts to handle such highly violent protests failed, the central
police force was not deployed. Only when the protest became a movement in June 26 and 27 1997,
did the party send 1,200 police personnel to restore the order, and several Politburo members to
investigate the unrest in Thai Binh.69 Importantly, at this point, the center still perceived the unrest as
an incident caused by rebellious citizens.70 It was not until the investigation was conducted that the
central government became aware that local corruption and power abuse were the main causes of the
movement, and that the movement involved many villages throughout the province.71 Similarly,
Kerkvliet suggests that “the scale and nature” of the unrest led to the party’s decision to respond.72
While emphasizing on the party’s dialogue with farmers, he also finds that the reason that the Party
sent its members to investigate the unrest was to know “what happened and why,” suggesting they
lacked information before the protests became large.73
Although we do not have access to documents confirming the lack of knowledge by the
central authorities of the discontent at early stages, several additional pieces of evidence suggests the
central government was largely unaware of the scale of the discontent until the protests grew into a
movement. First, the Prime Minister’s research team reported that many facts “surprised” the central
government regarding the protests’ organization and strategies. For example, only through in-depth
interviews with protesters did the government know that on May 11, 1997 approximately 2,000
farmers rode bicycles to the provincial center to protest peacefully in front of the Provincial Peoples’
Committee. At the same time, 10,000 other farmers were demonstrating at the district level.
Additionally, the report also professed to being “shocked” when finding out that 300 villagers had
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tied up the chairman and the party secretary of Quynh Hoa commune, and led them outside in the rain
without raingear.
An additional piece of evidence that the center was not aware of was that in contrast to the
following case of Dong Tam, none of the intellectual dissidents of the time within Hanoi such as Ha
Si Phu, Le Hong Ha, Nguyen Kien Giang, Hoang Minh Chinh and Tran Do wrote
contemporaneously about the protests.74 Most of their criticism at the time focused on the
shortcomings of Marxism-Leninism ideology, the power abuse and corruption inside the one-party
system.75 This was not due to lack of interest. After the center finally intervened, Tran Do, former
Lieutenant General of the People’s Army of Vietnam, wrote a 13-page letter to the Party, “blaming”
the Communist Party’s policies for the unrest in Thai Binh. Had these intellectuals known about the
protest, they likely would have used it to challenge the party.
A final piece of evidence regarding the lack of information is that after Thai Binh protests, the
central government adopted the Grass Root Democracy Decree, which included several components
designed specifically to improve vertical information flows. The decree provides a mechanism
through which the central government can better monitor popular discontent and local governments’
performance.76 These measures were likely devised to avoid the information deficit that allowed the
protests to fester.
The delayed interventions from the central government, which we argue was impacted by the
lack of information, were crucial in allowing the unrest to grow into a social movement. This is
because seven months was sufficient for protesters to overcome limited horizontal networks. Facing
weak horizontal communication networks, Thai Binh villagers relied on face-to-face communication
to spread information, which only allowed information to be disseminated only within a limited
distance. Overcoming this challenge required a conventional organization with clear strategies and
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leadership. Initial protests that took place in Quynh My commune in late 1996 were well-organized
and cohesive.77 On behalf of villagers, village leaders Pham Huu Hoanh, Pham Van Toi, Nguyen Van
Ty filed complaints and organized small peaceful sit-in protests in front of local government offices.
Because of the lack of response from the central government and the limited capacity of the local
government,78 the organization gradually reached out to other villagers both within the district and
across the province.
From late 1996 to May 1997, village protest leaders throughout the province cooperated to
learn from one another and share resistance strategies.79 For example, when initial protests in Quynh
Phu district began, leaders in other villages considered it a good model to fight against corruption at
local level, triggering many protests in other communes outside the district. Following Quynh Phu,
thousands of people in 120 out of 260 communes in the province participated in protests during the
period from January to mid-May 1997. The prime minister’s report concludes that the event on June
1997, which mobilized thousands of people throughout the province to Quynh Phu district at a
specific time, was the result of strong intra-communal organization and leadership.
Dong Tam: “Real time” Repression and Concessions
Turning to the post Internet era in Dong Tam, on April 15, 2017, protesters adopted a similar
strategy to Thai Binh, where they detained local authorities for the illegal arrest of their respected
leader. However, in contrast to Thai Binh, villagers in Dong Tam commune spread news, pictures
and videos of the protest on social media.80 The villagers also spread messages expressing their
support for the party’s policies and leadership.81 By doing so, the protesters attempted to send the
signal that their resistance centered on the misconduct of local authorities.
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Because the protest involved local authorities’ wrongdoing, the local government might have
attempted to block information from reaching the center.82 However, the local government’s efforts in
blocking information failed because the interactive nature of social media spread the very first pieces
of news horizontally and vertically in real-time. While it took seven months for the central
government to intervene in Thai Binh protests, the party had the first unofficial intervention in the
Dong Tam protest within one day! The government unofficially intervened by trying to shape the
narrative about the protests on state media. On April 16, many leading state newspapers wrote about
the incident and labeled the protesters as “extremists” who violated criminal laws and disrupted the
social order.83 These articles also warned citizens in Dong Tam and nearby communes not to
participate in the illegal protest.
On April 22, seven days after the protest, the Communist Party appointed Nguyen Duc
Chung, the People’s Committee Chair of Hanoi, to meet with villagers to negotiate an agreement to
end the dispute. This was the first official intervention from the central government. Chung promised
that the state would not prosecute the villagers for detaining the local authorities and that the state
would investigate the land use issue in Dong Tam. In return, the villagers were to discontinue their
protests. The compromise from the central government calmed down villagers and the protest
dissolved on April 22. In short, while the center waited seven months to intervene in Thai Binh, in
Dong Tam the center was involved nearly in real time with a mixture of real time repression and
concessions.
Why did early interventions from the party prevent Dong Tam protesters from incubating a
movement? This is because seven days was not sufficient for Dong Tam villagers to overcome
horizontal information challenges and mobilize a large number of people. Despite the presence of
social media, Dong Tam protesters faced horizontal information issues. The reason lies in the low
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population density in rural Hanoi. In 2017, rural Hanoi had average population density of below
1,000 persons per square kilometer compared to 11,220 persons per square kilometer in urban
Hanoi.84 Lower population density coupled with very strong vertical information flows means that
the central government identified the protesters and made it more likely that individual protesters
would be exposed. In fact, the central government was so successful in locating and identifying
individuals in Dong Tam unrest that six months after the protest, the police of Hanoi sent a letter to
call on individual protesters to turn themselves in.85
For fear of being identified by the government, villagers might have been reluctant to
participate in the protest. Overcoming this challenge also required Dong Tam protesters to rely on a
conventional organization. In 2012, Le Dinh Kinh, a respected former party member in Hoanh
village, founded the Dong Thuan group86 to represent villagers to deal with local authorities on land
issues.87 On behalf of the commune, the group filed complaints to require the authorities of My Duc
district to address agricultural land issues and corruption. However, unlike in Thai Binh, the Dong
Thuan group failed to reach to other communes and districts even though farmers throughout rural
Hanoi share grievances about land grabbing.88 It is telling that even other neighboring communities
impacted by the same land issue failed to participate in the protests. Had the central government
failed to intervene until seven months after the initial protest, the Dong Thuan group may have
attracted discontented farmers throughout the surrounding areas.
While social media had a limited impact on horizontal networks within rural Hanoi, it
informed urban intellectuals and dissenters of Dong Tam protest in real time. Utilizing Facebook,
YouTube and similar social media channels, democratic activists, bloggers, independent journalists
and political dissenters conveyed a completely different story about the incident. These “external
actors” blamed the Communist Party’s policies for the Dong Tam unrest.89 This increase in horizontal
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networks between rural protesters and “external actors” may have also facilitated rapid interventions
from the central government.90
The Impact of Social Media on Urban Protests
Because the impact of social media on urban protests has received greater attention in existing
research, we devote less attention to these cases. However, a brief examination of protest dynamics in
the pre-and post-Internet era suggests that in contrast to rural Vietnam, the Internet has impacted
protests in urban areas in much the same way it has in other contexts that have already been studied.
Prior to the Internet era, the Communist Party has faced urban political dissenters challenging the
absolute power of the party.91 During the period 1997-2002, before the Internet was popular in
Vietnam, several dozen political dissidents could be identified. However, they were largely isolated;
they either acted alone or in small groups. When dissidents teamed up to advocate for changes, their
efforts to organize were quickly spotted by the central government. We think that because those
dissidents were geographically confined to major cities such as Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Hai
Phong,92 the central government found it less challenging to monitor their activities. For example, in
2001, Vu Cao Quan attempted to form a network of like-minded intellectuals in his hometown of Hai
Phong, but his efforts were pre-empted by the party. In 2002, the central government arrested a
network of more than a dozen political dissidents in Hanoi. This network was comprised of
prominent figures such as Pham Que Duong, Hoang Minh Chinh, Nguyen Thanh Giang, and Tran
Tien Dung, who attempted to advocate for an independent anti-corruption organization.
Perhaps the largest attempt at a movement in the pre-Internet age was Bloc 8406, a network of
over 100 pro-democracy activists concentrated in urban centers throughout Vietnam.93 Founded in
April 2006, the group attempted to advocate for democracy, and freedom of political party
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establishment in Vietnam. Although the group did rely on the Internet amongst themselves, because
Internet access was very limited in 2006, the group could not mobilize ordinary people. The group
was also quickly repressed by the central government by the end of the year.94
In contrast with these early movements, the example of the tree movement shows how the
Internet changed the dynamics of urban protests. Consistent with the “virtual” civil society theory,
which argues that social media can substitute a weak “conventional” civil society in challenging the
authoritarian government,95 social media helped Hanoians overcome impediments to horizontal
communication, allowing spontaneous mobilization of thousands of “tree lovers.” A closer look at the
groups that fought against the “tree-felling” project reveals that they lacked a coherent leadership and
organization. Nonetheless, a critical event coupled with online activism and population density
allowed thousands to spill into the streets.
We also acknowledge that an important difference was that Bloc 8406 was calling for
democratization, a major change in the political system, while Hanoians were protesting against tree
cutting. The anti-regime nature of the protest is certainly also an important difference that might have
contributed to quicker repression of Bloc 8406. However, as others stress, the presence of any
collective action in a single-party regime is cause for concern as anti-regime activists may use
seemingly benign protests as vehicles to engage in anti-regime collective action.96 For that reason,
China and Vietnam keep a tight leash on any form of collective protest, regardless of the topic.
Additionally, the paucity of urban movements in the pre-Internet era means there are few movements
to analyze possibly because of the strong vertical information flows combined with weaker horizontal
flows.
On March 16, 2015, after hundreds of trees were cut down, Tran Dang Tuan, a Hanoian,
wrote an open letter requiring the chairman of Hanoi to reconsider the “tree-felling” project.97 Within
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a few hours, his letter was shared vigorously on the Internet, receiving 6,567 likes and 1,000 shares
on social media. Thanks to social media, the letter also reached the government in real time. On
March 17, 2015, the chairman of Hanoi replied on state media that the government did not need to
consult citizens on every decision. This event immediately stirred up intense public debate on social
media, triggering the spontaneous establishment of Facebook pages that advocated for the protection
of trees. Among many online platforms, three Facebook pages, including “6,700 people for 6,700
trees,” “6,700 green trees,” and “For a green Hanoi” stood out.
While these groups attracted many members, they did not have an identified leadership and
strategy. The page “6,700 people for 6,700 trees” was set up by a housewife who thought about
creating an online forum after listening to statements from the chairman of Hanoi.98 Within 24 hours,
without any efforts to mobilize people, the page attracted 10,000 members, well beyond the
expectations of the founder. The “6,700 green trees” page had twenty-two administrators who never
met and failed to reach an agreement on the objectives and content of the page, leading to the
collapse of the page.99 The group “For a Green Hanoi” attracted 10,000 members, but its mandate and
objectives changed when more people joined the group. Its coverage extended beyond the tree
movement to include public debt and social issues both domestically and internationally.100
Heeding the call of anonymous “virtual leaders,” thousands of people took to the streets.101
During March and April 2015, thousands of people spontaneously organized green walks and tree
hug marches along Thien Quang and Hoan Kiem lakes in Hai Ba Trung and Hoan Kiem districts- the
two most densely-populated in urban Hanoi. Why was the tree movement more successful in
mobilizing large scale participation than in rural Vietnam? Along with Wallace, we argue that one
reason lies in different population densities.102 Even a small percentage of that figure taking to urban
streets would make it difficult for the central government to handle the protest. As such, compared to
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their counterparts in Dong Tam protest, Hanoians in the tree movement enjoyed much lower odds of
being identified by the central government. Had the central government wanted to ask protesters in
the tree movement to turn themselves in, identifying whom to send a letter to would have been
extremely challenging! With lower chances of being spotted, tree protesters were more willing to
participate in protests without a conventional organization.
Other factors certainly mattered. For example, the felling of the trees in Hanoi was certainly a
salient, visible event. Additionally, Hanoians likely had greater Internet access than was the case in
Dong Tam. At the same time, land seizures in rural areas are also a salient, visible issue for farmers.
Furthermore, the speed with which the world became aware of the Dong Tam protest suggests that
the Dong Tam denizens were not unable to access the Internet. Therefore, we think it likely that the
changing social media environment also facilitated the protests.
Applying the Theory to Anti-China Protests
Our theory suggests that large-scale rural uprisings are less likely to occur with the presence of the
Internet. Does our theory travel outside of these cases? Since early 2000s, Vietnam has not witnessed
large-scale, regime-threatening rural movements even though contemporary farmers still experience
similar problems. Wells-Dang notes: “While no wide-ranging rural uprisings have taken place in the
past several years, localized episodes of land protests have become a common feature of the
Vietnamese landscape.”103 Written in 2004, Wells-Dang’s observation holds today. While land
protests remain frequent, none have grown to the same size of Thai Binh or Dong Nai. When farmers
protest, the central government rapidly intervenes. For example, in January 2012, a few farmers and
100 local authorities clashed violently over the withdrawal of land from fish farmer Doan Van Vuon
in a rural district near Hai Phong.104 The violence triggered immediate interventions from the central
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government, resulting in the punishment of both farmers and local authorities. Similarly, in April
2014, the government sent 1,000 troops to suppress farmers in Duong Noi, a rural district in Ha Noi,
who were protesting against the a local government land grab.105 It is important to note that the
Duong Noi residents have protested for many years, suggesting that the center does not always
intervene if the protests are sufficiently small. However, important for us is that the center is now
able to monitor Duong Noi in real time and intervene before such protests explode in size.
While rural uprisings regarding rural issues have not grown in size, a few large-scale
nationalist protests have spread to rural areas in recent years. The most prominent protests against
China in rural areas occurred in three central provinces including Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Binh Thuan
in early June 2018. During the first two weeks of June 2018, thousands of rural denizens in each
province protested against the National Assembly’s proposal on Special Economic Zone, granting a
99-year land lease to Chinese companies.106 The largest and most violent protest took place in Binh
Thuan, a coastal province, on June 10 and 11, 2017 where thousands of people violently attacked
local government’s offices.107 These protests could potentially challenge our theory.
However, while portions of these protests occurred in rural areas, we do not consider these
nationalist protests rural movements. Rather than rural movements, these protests were urban-led
protests that spread to rural areas. Because of their links to urban protests, and because of the fact that
such protests involve nationalism, the central government faces greater challenges in repressing them.
In contrast to Thai Binh, during the most recent anti-China protests, the central government was
informed of such nationalist protest at a very early phase, even a few days before the protest occurred
but the government was hesitant to repress it immediately.108 This is because repressing nationalist
protests might appear to be unpatriotic.109 Delayed interventions from the central government allowed
this nationalist protest to grow large across the nation, including rural areas.
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However, perhaps interestingly, the protests also reveal the difficulty farmers have in
generating a movement during periods when nationalism is not activated. When farmers in such
provinces protest rural issues such as coastal environmental pollution, the central government
intervenes in rapidly, making it unlikely to attract a large number of people. For example, on April
14, 2015, hundreds of farmers in Tuy Phong district, Binh Thuan province protested against the Vinh
Tan thermo-power electricity plant.110 On April 15, the central government intervened by making
Binh Thuan authorities and EVN (Electricity of Vietnam) promise to address environmental
problems caused by the factory in state media. On April 16, the protest dissolved. Some argue that
because protests against environmental pollution were heavily repressed, farmers in Binh Thuan took
advantage of the nationalist protest to pressure local governments to address environmental issues.111
In short, due to the constraints of the Internet environment, rural protesters have to take advantage of
urban-led nationalist movements to make explicitly rural claims.
Conclusion
Our paper provides a unique theory explaining the impact of the Internet on large-scale rural
movements in authoritarian regimes. We argue that the timing of interventions by the central
government is crucial in turning rural collective action into a social movement. We emphasize that
social media transforms political communications in rural areas in a way that hinders the
development of rural movements. Because social media has dramatically transformed vertical
information flows, the central government intervenes in rural protests at an early stage, reducing the
chance for rural protesters to incubate a large-scale movement.
Our theory has important implications for theories of democratization that rely on societal
forces and movements. Many scholars emphasize that mass uprisings, which can sustain collective
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action towards authoritarian regimes, are critical for democratic transitions.112 We suggest that social
media undermines such well-organized groups that can sustain threats on autocratic leaders. It is not
that in the Internet age, well-organized opposition groups cannot form. It is more because once they
are formed, autocratic leaders intervene at an earlier phase. This suggests that rural areas, which are
more dependent on organization, will be less likely to form large groups capable of challenging the
autocrat than in the past.
This has important implications for the types of movements we are likely to see challenge
autocrats in the future and the types of claims they will make. In short, where some groups
representing rural interests may have challenged the regime in the past, future challenges are likely to
come from urban areas. Additionally, it may impact the types of tactics used by rural interests. Seeing
the degree to which urban protests are facilitated, potential rural protesters may attach themselves to
urban-led movements to make their claims.
Moving forward, future work could test our theory that the timing of interventions from the
central government in rural protests reduces the odds of such protests becoming a social movement.
One possibility would be to measure the time it takes for central governments to intervene after an
initial round of protests. To test whether social media impacts such processes, future work can collect
tags, Facebook posts and relevant articles about protests and other sources which provide the central
government with initial information on protests. Rural movements can be operationalized through the
existence of an identified organization, numbers of participants, the purpose of the protests, the target
of the protests, and the existence of intra-communal coordination.113 Because of censorship in
autocracies, collecting such information on rural protests in the pre-Internet age requires careful
investigation of domestic archival documents. While we have taken a first step to understanding the
differences in the effects of social media on urban and rural movements, advancing this research will
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be critical to understanding the dynamics of social movements and democratization in the
information age.
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Appendix 1: Timeline of the 1997 Thai Binh Protests
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Appendix 2: Timeline of the 2017 Dong Tam Protests
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Appendix 3: Timeline of the 2015 Hanoi Tree Movement
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NOTES
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1 Dawn Brancati, Democracy Protests: Origins, Features, and Significance (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2006); Sidney G. Tarrow and Tilly Charles, Contentious Politics (NewYork:
Cambridge University Press, 2006); Van Stekelenburg, Jacquelien and Bert Klandermans, “The
Social Psychology of Protest,” Current Sociology, 61 (September 2013), 886-905; Mark R.
Beissinger, “The Semblance of Democratic Revolution: Coalitions in Ukraine's Orange Revolution,”
American Political Science Review, 107 (August 2013), 574-592.
2 Jeffrey Berejikian, “Revolutionary Collective Action and the Agent-Structure Problem.” The
American Political Science Review, 86 (September 1992), 647-657; Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow,
and Charles Tilly, The Dynamics of Contention (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003);
Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2011); Van Stekelenburg and Klandermans, 2013; Brancati, 2006
3 Mark R. Beissinger, “Conventional' and 'Virtual' Civil Society in Autocratic Regimes,”
Comparative Politics, 49 (April 2017), 351-371.
4 Nahed Eltantawy and Julie B. Wiest, “Social Media in the Egyptian Revolution: Reconsidering
Resources Mobilization Theory,” International Journal of Communication, 5 (September 2011),
1207-1224; Merlyna Lim, “Clicks, Cabs, and Coffee Houses: Social Media and Oppositional
Movements in Egypt, 2004-2011,” Journal of Communication, 62 (April 2012), 231-248; Pablo
Barbera, Ning Wang, Richard Bonneau, John T. Jost, Jonathan Nagler, Joshua Tucker and Sandra
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Gonzalez-Bailon, “The Critical Periphery in the Growth of Social Protests,” PLOS ONE, 10 (
November 2015), e0143611.
5 Erdem S. Aytac, Luis Schuimerini, and Susan Stokes, “Protests and Repression in New
Democracies,” Perspectives on Politics, 15 (March 2017), 62-82.
6 See John Gittings, “Peasant Protests Unsettle Beijing,” The Guardian, August 31, 2000, at
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/sep/01/johngittings [accessed on 2/10/2019]
7 See Lafranco, Edward. “China’s Hidden Hanyuan Incident.” United Press International. November
25, 2004. https://www.upi.com/Chinas-hidden-Hanyuan-Incident/53241101735019/
8 We relied on the Mass Mobilization (MM) dataset (see Clark, David and Patrick Regan,
“MM_Users_0515.pdf.” Mass Mobilization Protest Data. 2016. Manual Download the data set at:
https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/MMdata ) as evidence for China. Since 2010s, cell phones
have become widely used in China villages; the Chinese government and international organizations
such as World Bank have implemented many programs to bring Internet access to villagers (A World
Bank study “Information and Communications in Chinese Countryside” by Minges, Kimura,
Beschorner, Davies and Zhang). Internet penetration rate in rural China increased from 7% in 2007 to
35% in 2017. (China Internet Report 2018, at https://www.abacusnews.com/china-internet-
report/china-internet-2018.pdf). For Vietnam, we relied on the MM data combined with Vietnamese
language documents.
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9 While the MM dataset codes the Thai Binh protests as having only 1,000 participants, the
Vietnamese language sources we use below provide these higher estimates.
10 Yongshun Cai. Collective Resistance in China: Why Popular Protests Succeed or Fail (Redwood
City: Stanford University Press, 2010)
11 Gary King, Jennifer Pan and Margaret E. Roberts, “How Censorship in China Allows Government
Criticism but Silences Collective Expression,” American Political Science Review, 107 (May 2013),
326-343
12 Yuezhi Zhao, “Falun Gong, Identity and the Struggle over Meaning Inside and Outside China,” in
Contesting Media power: Alternative Media in a Networked World (2003). Nick Couldry and James
Curran (Eds.) (London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2003)
13 Joshua A. Tucker, Yannis Theocharis, Margaret E. Roberts, and Pablo Barbera, “From Liberation
to Turmoil: Social Media and Democracy,” Journal of Democracy, 28 (October 2017), 46-59.
14 Beissinger, 2017.
15 James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and subsistence in Southeast Asia.
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977); Samuel L. Popkin, The Rational Peasant: The Political
Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979); Roger D.
Petersen, Resistance and Rebellion: Lessons from Eastern Europe (New York: Cambridge University
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Press, 2001); Jeremy M. Weinstein, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2006).
16 As we discuss below, while there is most certainly reporting bias in the cross-national datasets, the
bias should not affect our argument. Indeed, if anything, there should be a greater likelihood of
discovering large, rural protests today than in the past, where the central and local governments had a
greater capacity to hide them. That we see so few large-scale land protests in Vietnam and China
after 2010, when the Internet becomes widespread in rural areas, gives us greater confidence that our
observed pattern is not the result of reporting bias.
17 See Lafranco, Edward. “China’s Hidden Hanyuan Incident.” United Press International.
November 25, 2004. https://www.upi.com/Chinas-hidden-Hanyuan-Incident/53241101735019/
18 Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and
China. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Charles Tilly, European Revolutions, 1492-
1992 (Making of Europe) (Oxford: Blackwell's, 1996); Tarrow, 2011.
19 Tarrow, 2011.
20 For a review, see Ruth Hall, Marc Edelman, Saturnino M. Borras Jr, Ian Scoones, Ben White, and
Wendy Wolford, “Resistance, Acquiescence or Incorporation? An Introduction to Land Grabbing and
Political Reactions 'From Below'.” Journal of Peasant Studies, 42 (July 2015), 467-488.
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21 Victor V. Magagna, Communities of Grain: Rural Rebellion in a Comparative Perspective (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1991).
22 Scott, 1977; Popkin, 1979, Mark I. Lichbach, “What Makes Rational Peasants Revolutionary?
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418; Olson, 1971. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (rev. ed.)
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23 James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” American Political
Science Review, 97 (February 2003), 75-90.
24 Kevin J. O'Brien, “Rightful Resistance,” World Politics, 49 (October 1996), 31-55; Tarrow, 2011;
Eltantawy and Wiest, 2011.
25 Larry Diamond, “Liberation Technology,” Journal of Democracy, 21 (July 2010), 69-83.
26 Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015); Lance W. Bennet and Alexandra Segerberg, “The Logic of
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Communication, and Society, 15 (June 2012), 739-768; Eltantawy and Wiest, 2011.
27 Beissinger, 2017.
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28 King et al., 2013
29 Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, “How the Chinese Government Fabricates
Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, not Engaged Argument,” American Political Science
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30 Bei Qin, David Stromberg, and Yanhui Wu, “Why Does China Allow Freer Social Media? Protests
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31 Tucker, Theocharis, Roberts, and Barbera, 2017.
32 Pippa Norris, A Virtuous Circle: Political Communication in Post-Industrial Societies, (New York:
Cambride University Press, 2000).
33 Tucker, Theocharis, Roberts, and Barbera, 2017.
34 Anita Breuer, Todd Landman, and Dorothea Farquhar, “Social Media and Protest Mobilization:
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35 Tucker, Theocharis, Roberts, and Barbera, 2017; Norris, 2000.
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36 Dan Slater, Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
37 Norris, 2000.
38 Lily L. Tsai, Accountability without Democracy: Solidary Groups and Public Goods Provision in
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39 Slater, 2010; Jeremy Wallace, Cities and Stability: Urbanization, Redistribution, and Regime
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40 Anthony Saich, 2005. SARS: China's Chernobyl or Much Ado about Nothing. In: A. Kleinman &
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71-104; Zhao, S., 2017. The Politics of Peasants. Springer: Springer.
41 Jennifer Pan and Kaiping Chen. 2018. “Concealing Corruption: How Chinese Officials Distort
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42 Georgy Egorov, Sergei Guriev, and Konstantin Sonin, “Why Resource-poor Dictators Allow Freer
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43 Olson, 1971.
44 Susanne Lohmann, “The Dynamics of Informational Cascades: The Monday Demonstrations in
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45 Bennet and Segerberg, 2012; Castells, 2015; Tianjian Shi, Jie Lu, and John Aldrich, “Bifurcated
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Adam Przeworski, Democracy and The Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe
and Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991)
47 Wallace, 2014.
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48 Castells, 2015; Zhu, Lu, and Shi, 2013.
49 Beissinger, 2017; Eltantawy and Wiest, 2011.
50 Beissinger, 2017.
51 Zeynep Tufekci, Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest
(Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2017)
52 Wallace, 2014.
53 Raj Desai, and Harry Eckstein, “Insurgency: The Transformation of Peasant Rebellion,” World
Politics, 42 (July 1990), 441-465; Fearon and Laitin, 2003; Mark Mattner, “Power to the People?
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54 Mattner, 2004; Johan Lagerkvist, “The Unknown Terrain of Social Protests in China: 'Exit',
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55 Pan and Chen, 2018.
56 Christopher Heurlin, Responsive Authoritarianism in China (Cambridge University Press, 2016)
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57 Popkin, 1979; Scott, 1977; Petersen, 2001.
58 Tucker, Theocharis, Roberts, and Barbera, 2017; Qin, Stromberg, and Wu, 2017.
59 A.D, “Truy cập internet phải trở thành một quyền cơ bản của con người”, Cafebiz, Sept.1, 2018, at
http://cafebiz.vn/truy-cap-internet-phai-tro-thanh-mot-quyen-co-ban-cua-con-nguoi-
20180901172731211.chn [accessed on 2/6/2019]
60 David Collier, “Understanding Process Tracing”, PS: Political Science and Politics, 44 (October
2011), 823-830.
61 Hai H. Nguyen, Political Dynamics of Grassroots Democracy in Vietnam (Sydney: Springer,
2017), 87-88
62 Zachary Abuza, Renovating Politics in Contemporary Vietnam (Colorado: Lynne Rienner
Publishers, 2001), 83
63 See “Criminal Liability Probe Begins in Dong Tam Land Dispute,” Vietnam News, June. 14, 2017,
at http://vietnamnews.vn/politics-laws/378288/criminal-liability-probe-begins-in-dong-tam-land-
dispute.html#FlXZo2Or2Dtb6SGQ.99 [accessed on 5/18/2018]. In 1980, the land was allocated to
the Ministry of Defense to build an airport, which was never built. After the project was cancelled,
the local government allowed residents to build houses and grow crops on the land. Also see: Toan
!
44!
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Le, “Lessons Learned From Vietnam’s Dong Tam Standoff,” The Diplomat, 2017, April 24, 2017 at
https://thediplomat.com/2017/04/lessons-learned-from-vietnams-dong-tam-standoff/ [accessed on
5/14/2018.]
64 Ibid.
65 Binh Q. Le, Ha T. Doan, Nam T. Nguyen and Tu T. Mai, Report on Movements to Protect # 6700
Trees in Hanoi, Hanoi: Institute for Studies of Society, Economy & Environment, Dec. 2015, at
http://isee.org.vn/Content/Home/Library/472/reports-on-movements-to-protect-6700-trees-in-
hanoi..pdf [accessed 5/14/2018]
66 See the report at: Tuong Lai, “Báo cáo về Vụ nổi dậy ở Thái Bình 1997”, Nghiên Cứu Lịch Sử,
Aug. 8, 1997, at https://nghiencuulichsu.com/2017/04/18/bao-cao-ve-vu-noi-day-o-thai-binh-1997/
[accessed 5/13/2018]. To understand what led to the unrest in Thai Binh province, the Communist
Party appointed one dozen-member research team to conduct in-depth research on the protest three
days after the event on June 26 and 27, 1997. The report has been quietly published on the Internet
under the name “Báo cáo sơ bộ về cuộc khảo sát xã hội học tại Thái Bình cuối tháng 6, đầu tháng 7
năm 1997” (Preliminary report on the sociological survey in Thai Binh late June, early July 1997).
67 Nguyen, 2017. Page 88-91
68 Pan and Chen, 2018.
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45!
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69 Zachary Abuza, Renovating Politics in Contemporary Vietnam (Covent Garden: Lynne Rienner
Publishers, Inc., 2001), 84
70 Dong Chuong Tu, “Biểu tình ở Việt Nam: Cái nhìn từ lịch sử đến thực tiễn”, BBC Tiếng Việt, Aug.
5, 2018, at https://www.bbc.com/vietnamese/forum-45070952
71 Ibid. Also see Tuong Lai, 1997.
72!Benerdict J. Tria Kerkvliet, “Authorities and the People: An Analysis of State-Society Relations in
Vietnam,” in Hy V Luong, eds., Postwar Vietnam: Dynamics of a Transforming Society,1st
ed.(Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003), 48!
!
73!Ibid!
!
!
74 Carlyle A. Thayer, “Political legitimacy in Vietnam: Challenge and response,” Politics & Policy,
38 (June 2010), 423-444.
75 Ibid.
76 Mattner, 2004.
77 Nguyen, 2017, 88.
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46!
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78 We think that the local governments ignored protesters’ concerns because the authorities
underestimated the severity of the protest.
79 See the report “Preliminary report on the sociological survey in Thai Binh late June, early July
1997.”
80 Toan Le, The Diplomat, 2017.
81 Villagers created a board with the message: “Nhân dân Đồng Tâm tuyệt đối tin tưởng vào chính
sách và đường lối của Đảng và nhà nước” (Dong Tam people completely believe in the Communist
Party’s policies).
82 Toan Le, The Diplomat, 2017.
83 See Huong Quynh, “Không để thế lực thù địch lợi dụng tiếp tục làm nóng vụ Đồng Tâm,”,
Vietnamnet, April 25, 2017, at http://vietnamnet.vn/vn/thoi-su/vu-dong-tam-my-duc-khong-de-the-
luc-thu-dich-loi-dung-lam-nong-369626.html [accessed 5/14/2018]; See “Thông tin về tình hình tại
xã Đồng Tâm, huyện Mỹ Đức,” VOV Vietnam, April 16, 2017, at http://vov.vn/tin-nong/ha-noi-
thong-tin-ve-tinh-hinh-tai-xa-dong-tam-huyen-my-duc-614287.vov
[accessed 5/14/2018]; Also see “Hà Nội kêu gọi người dân Mỹ Đức thả công an bị bắt giữ,”
VNExpress, April 16, 2017, at https://web.archive.org/web/20170416161040/http://vnexpress.net/tin-
tuc/phap-luat/ha-noi-keu-goi-nguoi-dan-my-duc-tha-cong-an-bi-bat-giu-3571150.html [accessed
5/14/2018]
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47!
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84 See Minh Anh, “Dân số của Hà Nội năm 2017 tăng lên 1.8% so với năm trước,” Cổng thông tin
điện tử chính phủ Thủ đô Hà Nội, Dec. 22, 2017, at http://thanglong.chinhphu.vn/dan-so-cua-ha-noi-
nam-2017-tang-len-1-8-so-voi-nam-truoc [accessed 5/17/2018]
85 See Dien Luong, “Hanoi Police Urge Protesters Implicated in Dramatic Land Dispute to Turn
Themselves in,” VNExpress, Oct. 14, 2017, at https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/hanoi-police-urge-
protesters-implicated-in-dramatic-land-dispute-to-turn-themselves-in-3655562.htm [accessed
5/18/2018]
86 “Dong Thuan” means consensus or agreement. The group consists of Kinh, his sons and a few
retired communal officials.
87 See “Bàn về nhóm ‘đồng thuận’ và dòng họ Lê Đình,” Việt Nam Thời Báo, no date,
http://vntb.net/ban-ve-nhom-dong-thuan-va-dong-ho-le-dinh.html [accessed 5/14/2018]
88 Kaitlin Hansen, “Land Law, Land Rights, and Land Reform in Vietnam: A Deeper Look into
‘Land Grabbing’ for Public and Private Development,” Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection,
2013 at http://digitalcollections.sit.edu/isp_collection/1722/ [accessed 6/5/2018]; Andrew Wells-
Dang, “Political Space in Vietnam: a View from the ‘rice-roots’,” The Pacific Review, 23 (March
2010), 93-112
!
48!
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89 See Lan Huong, “Vụ Đồng Tâm: Điệp khúc “thế lực thù địch” kích động!,” Đài Á Châu Tự Do,
April 25, 2017, at https://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/in_depth/dong-tam-case-the-hostile-forces-
provoke-lh-04252017125509.html [accessed 5/14/ 2018].
90 The connection between rural protesters and urban intellectuals might undermine “Rightful
Resistance” by rural citizens. We will explore this topic in more detail in future research.
91 Thayer, 2010
92 Carlyle A. Thayer, “Political Dissent and Political Reform in Vietnam 1997-2002”, in The Power
of Ideas: Intellectual Input and Political Change in East and Southeast Asia, ed. Claudia Derichs and
Thomas Heberer (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2006).
93 Ibid.
94 Before the summit meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in November
2006, the central government increased their harassment and repression of Bloc 8406. After the
event, leaders of the Bloc were arrested and convicted.
95 Beissinger, 2017.
96!King, Pan and Roberts, 2013!
!
49!
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97 See Công Anh, “Chặt 6.700 cây xanh: Ông Trần Đăng Tuấn viết thư ngỏ gửi chủ tịch Hà Nội,”
VTCNews, Mar. 17, 2015, at https://vtc.vn/chat-6700-cay-xanh-ong-tran-dang-tuan-viet-thu-ngo-gui-
chu-tich-ha-noi-d198659.html [accessed 5/15/2018]
98 Anh. N. Vu, “Grassroots Environmental Activism in an Authoritarian Context: The Trees
Movement in Vietnam,” VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit
Organizations, 28(June 2017), 1180-1208.
99 Ibid.
100 Ibid.
101 Thiem H. Bui, “The Influence of Social Media in Vietnam's Elite Politics,” Journal of Current
Southeast Asian Affairs, 35 (August 2016), 89-112.
102 Jeremy Wallace, “Cities, Redistribution, and Authoritarian Regime Survival,” Journal of Politics.
75(July 2013), 632-635, 633
103 Wells-Dang, 2010, 100
104 See Hoàng Việt, “Cựu phó chủ tịch huyện Tiên Lãng bị bắt,” VNExpress, Oct.22, 2012, at
https://vnexpress.net/tin-tuc/phap-luat/cuu-pho-chu-tich-huyen-tien-lang-bi-bat-2250452.html
[accessed 6/22/2018]
!
50!
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105 See Roseanne Gerin, “Vietnamese Police Evict Hundreds of Families From Village Near Hanoi,”,
Radio Free Asia, June 9, 2016, at https://www.rfa.org/english/news/vietnam/vietnamese-police-evict-
hundreds-of-families-from-village-near-hanoi-09062016164451.html[accessed 6/22/2018]
106 See “Hàng vạn người biểu tình khắp Việt Nam chống ‘Luật Đặc Khu’ và ‘An Ninh Mạng’,”
Người Việt, June 10, 2018, at https://www.nguoi-viet.com/viet-nam/hang-van-nguoi-bieu-tinh-khap-
viet-nam/ [accessed 6/22/2018]; also see “VN: Hàng ngàn dân Hà Tĩnh biểu tình ôn hoà chống Luật
Đặc Khu và An ninh mạng,” June 17, 2018, at https://nhatbaovanhoa.com/a7655/hang-ngan-dan-ha-
tinh-bieu-tinh-chong-luat-dac-khu-va-an-ninh-mang [accessed 6/22/2018]
107 See Đức Trong, “Đoàn người quá khích tràn vào trụ sở UBND tỉnh Bình Thuận,” Tuổi Trẻ Online,
June 10, 2018, at https://tuoitre.vn/doan-nguoi-qua-khich-tran-vao-tru-so-ubnd-tinh-binh-thuan-
20180610212701884.htm [accessed 6/26/2018]
108 There were calls for protests against the Special Economic Zone a few days before the protests
occurred on 10 June. Protests first occurred in big cities such as Ha Noi, Da Nang and Ho Chi Minh
cities, and then spread to rural provinces.
109 Jessica C. Weiss, Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2014)
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51!
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110 See “Bình Thuận: Người biểu tình đụng độ Công an,”, BBC Vietnam, April 16, 2015, at
https://www.bbc.com/vietnamese/vietnam/2015/04/150416_binhthuan_protesters_clash_police
[accessed 6/26/2018]
111 See Kính Hoà, “Bạo động tại Bình Thuận, giọt nước tràn ly,” Đài Á Châu Tự Do, June 11, 2018,
at https://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/in_depth/binh-thuan-violence-the-water-drop-
06112018125210.html [accessed 6/27/2018]; Also see “Bình Thuận nổi dậy chống luật đặc khu, cảnh
sát cơ động bổ mũ giáp tháo chạy,” Viễn Đông, June 11, 2018, at
http://www.viendongdaily.com/binh-thuan-noi-day-chong-luat-dac-khu-canh-sat-co-dong-bo-mu-
giap-XPolYqMY.html [accessed 6/27/2018]
112 Tarrow, 2011; Beissinger, 2013.
113 Brancati, 2006; Timur Kuran, “Now Out of Never: The Element of Surprise in the East European
Revolution,” World Politics, 44 (October 1991), 7-48.
