INTRODUCTION

A multinational fashion retailer. The prime minister of Singapore. A COVID-19 patient who is the daughter of an ultra-wealthy Vietnamese family. They have all been the targets of online Vietnamese nationalists under different circumstances.

Indeed, recent manifestations of potent online nationalism in Vietnamese cybersphere have forced the authorities to become acutely wary of, sensitive to and even accommodating of it. This marks a significant development in the social media landscape: At the very outset, Vietnam's Internet users turned to social media to mostly challenge the official narrative of the mainstream media and to offer a counter-narrative to it. But social media users have also become increasingly vocal and frequent in defending Vietnam's image abroad by flagging content they deem controversial and inappropriate. This dynamic has created complex challenges and dilemmas for the authorities who have at times found it useful to leverage nationalistic sentiments to advance its foreign policy positions and yet have reiterated that the task of cracking down on anti-state content in cyberspace has never been more crucial.

This paper seeks to answer these questions: What triggers an online nationalistic backlash in Vietnam? Who are the actors behind such campaigns? What are the tactics and strategies used and what are their end goals? Has nationalist online expression been able to shape Vietnam's foreign and domestic policymaking or has it been shaped by them? Has nationalist online expression influenced discourse in the mainstream media?

The paper lays out key characteristics of Vietnamese nationalism and examines how it has evolved. It then takes a closer look at the emergence of online nationalism and high-profile case studies in an effort to sketch out common themes of online nationalistic narratives. The paper also explores what role the Vietnamese state plays in shaping these narratives and how much influence it wields in controlling and managing online nationalism. It concludes by outlining some major dilemmas facing the authorities if they continue seeking to play the online nationalism card in the future.

HOW VIETNAMESE NATIONALISM EVOLVES AND TAKES OFF ONLINE

To examine expressions of nationalism in Vietnam, it is useful to look at how such sentiments have panned out in China and put them in a comparative context.