Digital vigilantism in Vietnam: the case of Patient 17

In March 2020, a Vietnamese woman was confirmed to be positive for the COVID-19 virus. It seemed like this was a mere infection, but it creates a digital vigilantism case mainly on Facebook among Vietnamese people.

Through the analysis, I will show how social media enables vigilante justice. With the nature of the case, are there any positive or negative consequences for the targeted person? For both Vietnamese and foreign newspapers, do their over-interest in the case have any impacts? This case will indicate how the citizens, social media, and news publishers participate in the digital vigilantism process.

Who is the 17th Patient?

The case is about a Vietnamese woman who tested positive for the COVID-19 virus after returning from Europe. This is the first case in Hanoi – the capital city and after 22 days without any new infection in Vietnam. She was called “Patient 17” because she is the 17th COVID-19  case at that time.

Vietnamese government imposed a compulsory health declaration for any passengers who came to the country to restrict the spread of the virus. The government also  the Law on Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases  in 2007. If the patient infects too many other people,  must declare one’s name, address, and a detailed schedule for the controlling disease process. During that time, anyone who came back from Italy, where the viruses spread, need to take quarantine.

But because Patient 17 did not show her passport that she used to go to Italy, she was allowed to go home without quarantine. This false medical declaration had enormous consequences for people in Hanoi. The family members and the passengers sitting next to her on the plane tested positive for the virus. People from both the entire street where she lived and the hospital she came for a check-up w forced to take a 14-day quarantine the case affected more than hundreds of people in the city.

After 24 hours, the news  people started to find the personal information of Patient 17, posteing and comment on news publish pages on Facebook.  huge reactions from online users,  ‘naming and shaming’ visibility when users post all personal information on Facebook. ecause it “allows citizens to discuss a targeted individual, publish the personal details and issue calls for action” (Trottier, 2015). The reactions from social media are unfortunate. Patient 17 may not expect her data to be exposed online and used as means of vigilantism. Those negative media visibilities become a weapon to punish the targeted person. People use it to criticize her and create the intensonline because it would spread to many other citizens within a few days.

The digital vigilantism on Facebook

The first page confirmed the case in social media is Beatvn. This is a verified news channel on Facebook, widely known Vietnamese people because of the ‘up-to-the-minute’ piece of news. The post's caption  Patient 17, with pictures showing the street where she lived was being quarantined to control the disease. Significantly, these pictures were taken by citizens who live nearby, and they sent them to Beatvn. The post revealed the patient’s name as “N.H.N” (for the purpose of anonymity) and her schedule in short - where she got the virus.

Instagram @serenaverbon

In the comment section, people revealed Patient 17’s profile on Facebook, even the video that she took years ago with a famous chef. They were getting involved in a part of the digital vigilantism process by finding the personal information on online platforms (Facebook and Instagram), sharing it with other people to have more personal judgment for the case. Vigilantism on digital media can be framed in the context of online communication: the sharing of personal details, photos, and videos, adding commentary, discussion, and calls for action (Trottier, 2015). All images and information are founded by the citizens, showing the informational purposes and the informed identity collecting through a situation. These practices demonstrate the concept of doxing or human flesh search when Patient 17’s personal information, including her name, address, and appearance. Social media develops as a tool to identify the person. The public database (the picture that she posts on her Facebook profile) gathers numerous people into one issue.

The features of digital vigilantism can be witnessed in this case. First, the public could not accept the behavior of Patient 17. People felt angry and indignant because she did not , affecting several people. It is claimed that the post from Beatvn was being a means of conveying emotions to the public. Because right in the comment section, people show their anger through their works of searching for her identity. Another feature is that the case had a high chance of visibility online. People conduct online shaming in the comments. This case is about a COVID-19 patient and about many people who might be infected from the case. It becomes newsworthy for the traditional news publisher when they report the viral online news.

Identifying the misguided target

The first thing is when the news about the Patient 17 came in, people hurriedly found who this person was, and they even detected mistaken identity from other people. One of the side effects of digital vigilantism is that it “can lead to several negative consequences” (Kosseff, 2016). In this case, people were seeking another person and posting her image online. The primary tool people use to find target is social media, so not all of the information will be confirmedly right; it  “the target is misidentified as a suspect or offender” (Trottier, 2015). This case is also an inevitable incident of confusion. 

Instagram @serenaverbon

The citizens started to upload the image of another woman who has similar appearances to Patient 17, showing that she had attended many events. People thought that ‘she’-as the Patient, went to many places without quarantine after returning to Vietnam. It is seen that people found the image of the other celebrities that they had posted on social media, claimed that it was Patient 17. It leads to the damage of people’s reputations, they might receive negative comments for the actions they did not do. The woman who was misidentified as Patient 17 also had to confirm that she was not the targeted person on her personal Instagram account. Digital vigilantism participants may not be aware of the actual impact of their actions (Ronson, 2015). The citizens who seek the information can “pursue informational goals such as identifying a targeted individual,” the data cannot be guaranteed for the exact purposes (Trottier, 2015). The extensive consequences might affect many people because of the wrong identification.

"Digital vigilantism participants may not be aware of the actual impact of their actions."

However, with loads of information, including mistaken identity, digital vigilantism may positively impact the Vietnamese socio-cultural context. There are several cases that the reporters got newsworthy information from online users. Besides the better impacts on the government’s efforts to reduce the pandemic, they also provide the necessary measures to prevent fake news about the outbreak. There werepeople asked by the police to deletee the bad news relating to Patient 17’s case. Further, Vietnam has recently set the regulating rules to control and protect information security. Together with the controlling disease scenarios, the importance of safeguarding information is also a concern of the government.

The different news values (maybe more dramatic header, e.g. n)

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The issue of the Patient 17 case did not end there. Six months after the digital vigilantism had happened, the New Yorker - an American weekly magazine, published an article about the public shaming during the COVID-19 pandemic. Patient 17 was invited to express how her personal information was leaked. nexpectedly making Vietnamese social media users even angrier with her side of the story. They believed that she was misunderstanding the type of regulation happening in Vietnam. Because there was no official news broadcast spreading her private information digital vigilantism issues. People commented that citizens even forgot about the case, so why had she have to tell a misleading story for a foreign newspaper? The vigilantism started again, and people indicated the article’s misunderstandings, showing Patient 17 identity to find justice.

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The New Yorker fault of the Vietnamese government in leaking Patient 17’s information. (maybe: international news reporting has different news values compared to reporing on domestic news. This also applies to how New York Time picks up this topic of Patient 17 in Vietnam)It is claimed that the New Yorker's news value is different from those of Vietnamese counterparts by showing how the Vietnamese government exposed personal information. The Herman and Chomsky (1988) ‘propaganda model’ to the news value can be seen in the US news media situation when they put the “filters” to form the issue from another angle. The Western news media indicates the mistakes of a non-Western government in the international news reports, showing how they choose and interpret the news. (I don't think this is episodic. It is more thematic and general, as international reports may focus on general social issues like privacy and how the states are handeling privacy in other countires. )Daily news coverage was strongly biased towards an episodic interpretation in which news depicts social issues as limited to events only and not placed in a broader interpretation or content (De Vreese, 2005). The New Yorker’s article only focuses on the information’s privacy, which is restricted by the small context during the pandemic.

Further, they replace the report’s precision with the Western’s news value, as when the Vietnamese government did not expose Patient 17’s information (NYT may foregrounds their value of dislosing misdeeds of the state in this report). This language of reflection is similarly employed in critiques of news coverage to pinpoint evidence of ‘bias’, that is, to question whether journalists have mirrored reality in an ‘objective’ manner or, failing that, the extent to which they have allowed certain ‘distortions’ to creep into the reporting process (Allan, 2004).

According to Harcup and O’Neill (2016), the journalists target the ‘magnitude’ news story, “that is perceived as sufficiently significant either in the numbers of people involved or in potential impact stories.” The information that citizens need is to indicate the related news from the Patient 17 issues. Vietnamese journalists epidemic prevention and prevent fake news to report, which is different from the US's news value.

The remediating and amplifying role of the news outlets

The news publishers and social media all focused on th especially when people searched for Patient 17 information and started taking photos of things related to the case. The news broadcast organizations even use the citizen witnessing materials to write reports about the issues. This supermarket photo below was taken by a nearby resident, posted it online, and  VOV2 news reporters asked for permission to use it. While evidence of such campaigns may be removed, news media coverage will likely remain and will include information about individual targets and their alleged offending acts (Trottier, 2015).  personal information might be deleted, but journalists keep follow the case to report to citizens. Journalists use many ways to keep up with the news, even going to social media to follow the trend alert.

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Because of the case’s virality,  followed by the mass media. The news publishers will focus on and even amplify the news by other channels. It can be seen through digital vigilantism, social media networks urge people to share, connect, and communicate with others through the issue. The media is following the agenda of social media hits to publish the news on their channels.

Following social media hit is a new routine done by professionals nowadays, and “it has also provided journalists with a new way of learning more about their audiences” (Napoli, 2011). Journalists use software to track trending topics; it is indeed for the sake of traffic. They follow the viral topic and predict what can go viral through the rising issues on social media. Stories that had gotten good traffic based on web analytics would get updates and follow-up (Tandoc Jr, 2014).  journalists use web analytics in selecting the news on the day when the government notified the 17th case. News publishers also use the native strategy report about the Patient 17 news on their main Facebook account, and then people can do the vigilantism right in the comment section, create more traffic to their sites.

The news outlets play an essential role in amplifying the cases of digital vigilantism. It enlarges the audiences’ scales and adds another issue in the different news frames, with varying values of the news; in this case, it comes from the Western media. Newsmakers had to go to media outlets in order to share their message, get it amplified, and reach those they wanted to reach (Malik, 2012). . In the meantime, journalists decide among various information and choose what will present for their news organizations. Just as the way the New Yorker’s article has a distinctive facet with ones from Vietnamese news. With the growth of news sourcing, news publishers have more works when they report the information, so they need to expand in different frames of the story. 

Conclusion

Through the case, the features of digital vigilantism are shown to illustrate the scale of people participating in the action. Especially nowadays, when social networks are becoming a space to share connect people’s opinions. Compared to the past time when citizens did not have the Internet and social media to show personal opinions, it is  to communicate and enlarge the public’s scale into the situation. With the mass mobilization. Social media here is paying the role as the affordance for the citizens the public shaming about Patient 17 happened and becoming a tool for the digital journalists to update and process the news for the organizations.

The whole situation has led to a mass discussion on online public shaming and how to control personal information privacy. Although there were some positive sights in managing the information, it seems that the online search for Patient 17’s identity brings the side effects in finding misidentif people.

The news value and how journalists keep up with the issue are also indicated due to the news’s popularity. Through Patient 17’s case, the evaluation of different news values shows the news selection to publish stories. Especially with a digital vigilantism case, journalists should consider .

References

Allan, S. (2004) News Culture, Second Edition. Maidenhead and New York: Open University Press.

De Vreese, C. H. (2005). News framing: Theory and typology. Information design journal & document design.

Harcup, T., & O’Neill, D. (2016). What is News? Journalism Studies, 18(12), 1470–1488.

Kosseff, J., (2016). The hazards of cyber-vigilantism. Computer Law & Security Review 324.

Malik, O., (2012). Amplification & the changing role of media. https://gigaom.com/2012/10/13/amplification-the-changing-role-of-media/.

Napoli P (2011) Audience Evolution: New Technologies and the Transformation of Media Audiences. New York: Columbia University Press.

Ronson, J. (2015). How one stupid tweet blew up Justine Sacco’s life. The New York Times Magazine 12 February. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-….

Tandoc, E. (2014). Journalism is twerking? How web analytics is changing the process of gatekeeping. New Media & Society, 16(4), 559–575.  https://doi-org.tilburguniversity.idm.oclc.org/10.1177/1461444814530541.

Trottier, D., Digital Vigilantism as Weaponisation of Visibility. Philos. Technol. 30, 55–72 (2017). https://doi-org.tilburguniversity.idm.oclc.org/10.1007/s13347-016-0216-4.