Broadband Internet Policy and Farmers Collective Agency in Vietnam

Vietnam approved the national rural information and communication plan in 2011 that includes the building of a 420 million CAD broadband network infrastructure intended to link all smallest administrative units by 2015. However, the country has not achieved this goal yet. Vietnam has experienced countless failures in rolling out Information Communication Technology systems mainly because of a top-down diffusion approach which sees users as passive recipients. To
avoid those common pitfalls, the project – a part of my dissertation – views that farmers are active agents whose collective agency has a say in shaping the Internet policy that works and responds to their needs; erases undemocratic practices; and expands their political, economic, social, and personal freedoms. In this project, I plan to gather broadband Internet development information and travel across the country to select representative villages for public consultations about the technology policy when broadband Internet is still in the making and has not got entrenched.

Faculty Supervisor:

Maria Bakardjieva

Student:

Trang Pham

Partner:

Discipline:

Medicine

Sector:

University:

University of Calgary

Program:

Globalink