Exploring attitudes in online discussions on facebook about the grays incident essex lorry deaths

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF LINGUISTICS & CULTURES OF ENGLISH-SPEAKING COUNTRIES/ FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF LINGUISTICS & CULTURES OF ENGLISH-SPEAKING COUNTRIES/

FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION

NGUYỄN NGỌC HỒNG MINH

GRADUATION PAPER Exploring attitudes in online discussions on Facebook about the

Grays incident (Essex lorry deaths)

SUBMITTED IN FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR THE DEGREE OF

BACHELOR OF ARTS (ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION)

Supervisor:

HOÀNG THỊ HẠNH, Ph.D

Ha Noi, May / 2020

ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA NGÔN NGỮ VÀ VĂN HÓA CÁC NƯỚC NÓI TIẾNG ANH/

KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH

NGUYỄN NGỌC HỒNG MINH

KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

Tìm hiểu thái độ người dùng trong những cuộc thảo luận phổ biến trên Facebook về sự kiện 39 người chết tại Essex

Giáo viên hướng dẫn:

HOÀNG THỊ HẠNH (T.S.)

Hà Nội, tháng Năm / 2020

Signature of Approval from Supervisor:

ACCEPTANCE PAGE

I hereby state that I: Nguyễn Ngọc Hồng Minh, class QH2016.F1.E2.CLC, being a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (English Language Teacher Education) accept the requirements of the College relating to the retention and use of Bachelor’s Graduation Paper deposited in the library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited

in the library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan or reproduction of the paper

Nguyễn Ngọc Hồng Minh

May 11th, 2020

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Firstly, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Hoàng Thị Hạnh from the Faculty of Linguistics and Cultures of English-speaking Countries Had it not been for her professional guidance, invaluable advice, tolerance, and encouragement, this graduation thesis would not have come to fruition It was all thanks to her insights and feedback that prevented this study from arriving at an impasse

Next, I wish to extend my thanks towards my friends and immediate family for always being technically and emotionally supportive regardless of circumstance Their sentiments definitely were of great necessity when dealing with temper issues from the process of conducting this study

Last but not least, I sincerely appreciate the mutual assistance and companionship of Nguyễn Diệu Thúy from the Faculty of English Language Teacher and Education Although operating in different faculties and working

on disparate themes, we constantly exchanged ideas and theories to help each other better our writings

ABSTRACT

As social media plays a progressively important role in our everyday life,

it becomes a platform to connect people and ideas, and to express thoughts and behaviors with minimal geographical and political barriers Amongst popular topics for discussion, the Essex lorry deaths in late 2019 received much attention from the Vietnamese Facebook community as it is one of the most outrageous human smuggling crimes Vietnam has witnessed up to current times The public responses to the tragedy vary from sympathetic condolences to more aggressive derogation of the 39 deceased undocumented immigrants While the research body on social network users’ responses to misfortunate events is by no means limited, very few studies were dedicated to human smuggling cases’ reactions This study, therefore, explores a number of social network influencers’ comment threads regarding the incident to discover common attitudes of Facebook users

on the victims’ tragedy Findings reveal three major attitudes, namely victim blaming, victim support, and arguments about the government’s responsibility While supportive behaviors reign over the other two in sheer quantity with 62.98 percent, which could indicate the public’s comprehensive empathetic attitude towards the deceased, adverse reactions (i.e., derogative comments ridiculing the deceased and their decision) nonetheless deserve careful inspection due to their severity and influence over people

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACCEPTANCE PAGE

1.2 Statement of the research problem and question 2

4.2.2.2 Explanation and/or speculation of the victims’ circumstance 27 4.2.2.3 Spreading knowledge of the event to friends and/or relatives 28 4.2.3 Arguments about the government’s responsibility 29

5.2 Limitations and suggestions for future research 36

Post 01 47

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1

Qualitative content analysis of Facebook discourses about the Essex lorry deaths incident (p 17)

Theme Sub-theme/content Victim blaming Disregard of individual’s

circumstance and Baseless assumptions

Othering (labelling, sarcasm, memes, and vulgarity)

Victim support Condolences for the victims

Explanation and/or speculation of the victims’ circumstance

Spreading knowledge of the event

to friends and/or relatives Arguments about the government’s

responsibility

Condemning the government for their weaknesses

against Defending the government’s policies

Figure 1 Showcasing different attitudes in popular Facebook discussions about the Essex lorry deaths incident (p 18)

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale for the study

As technology evolves, the means to acquire news are now no longer limited to traditional media such as newspaper or viva voce (by word of mouth) Digital media consumption has become many worldwide citizens’ optimal means of acquiring information thanks to its versatility and constant updates In Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism annual reports, the analysts repeatedly put emphasis on the dominance of virtual media platforms over other methods of news acquisition According to their scholars, people are shifting their preference of getting updated with current affairs from using radio, TV, or print media to the Internet and social network services, mainly via smartphones (Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 2019)

Social networking sites not only serve as a medium to connect different people across any distance, but also as a prime news distribution source Extracts from a 2015 report suggest that 33 percent and 48 percent of smartphone users from the UK and the U.S respectively, use social network to obtain new information (Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 2015) Universal social network services such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the likes are capable of increasing awareness over mass audience, as well as raising the level of user interaction over any subject (Josh, 2014) They offer their users

a virtual platform to contribute to the whole discourse by expressing their opinions and viewpoints on news-related events (Zaleski, Gundersen, Baes, Estupinian, & Vergara, 2016) However, online discussions are prone to become

a battlefield for conflicting viewpoints from users because people possess different beliefs and values, and are not necessarily required to agree to a single notion The contents produced by such a diverse community may provide insights into discovering collective attitudes regarding controversial events Coupled with the advance of social media, this hereby opens the opportunity for social studies researchers to generalize the public’s conception in theory

1.2 Statement of the research problem and question

In this day and age of globalization, almost everyone has an opportunity

to immigrate to another country to pursue multiple ambitions As of 2018, there are approximately 4.5 million Vietnamese sojourners (Saigon Online, 2018) Adversely, the promise of wealth and luxury has attracted a number of undocumented immigrants to developed countries Among such nations, England is considered to be one of the more ideal environments to earn a fortune According to the Office for National Statistics in 2014, 28,000 people born in Vietnam were residents in the UK (Office for National Statistics, 2014)

As such, there has been a high demand for human smuggling/smuggling into said nations, using whichever possible means, from inauthentic visas to hiding humans in containers, to pass infrared checkpoints Of course, the chance of success is being gradually marginalized, thanks to advanced technology and tighter security inspection However, this does not halt ambitious Vietnamese from migrating to the UK On 23 October, 2019, the case of 39 unauthorized Vietnamese immigrants found dead in an articulated refrigerator lorry’s trailer in Essex has raised numerous questions In the aftermath of the Essex lorry deaths incident, people started wondering the reasons for the victims’ decision Amongst popular discussions on Facebook, there seems to be a vast array of attitudes implied in participants’ comments Whereas a large number of social network service users offered condolences, or spread knowledge of the incident

to their friends and relatives through tagging or sharing, a growing body of netizens also engage in criticizing the deceased for their ‘foolish’ choice

As a matter of fact, there exist very few studies and findings on netizens’ reactions about undocumented immigration deaths, especially in Vietnam Investigating the attitudes of Vietnamese social network users regarding this incident may yield useful findings about how Vietnamese react to controversial issues in general Therefore, this case study about 39 dead unauthorized Vietnamese immigrants aims to shed light on said research gap, and seeks to answer the following question to contribute to existing literature

What are netizens' attitudes expressed on Vietnamese’ popular Facebook online discussions about the Essex lorry deaths incident?

1.3 Scope of the study

This study lies in the field of social studies with regard to human behaviors and attitudes on social network To answer the research question, various attitudes of Facebook users who commented on the collected public posts are categorized into themes and sub-themes Each theme is discussed to clarify users’ meaning and implications when making comments

The case study collects four Facebook influencers’ public posts containing 2,241 comments The posts contain clashing attitudes towards the 39 Vietnamese undocumented immigrants for various reasons; and the comments are divided into two main conflicting sides, either supporting and sympathizing with the victims, or the opposite end of the attitude spectrum, which is condemning them Within this research, the emphasis will be placed on the latter

1.4 Significance of the study

The researcher believes this case study should assist students and other researchers of the same field in analyzing Vietnamese social network users’ attitudes and reactions about controversial issues The research outcome hopefully would be able to discover users’ thoughts and their rationales for said beliefs in online discussions about undocumented immigration in general, and about the Essex lorry deaths incident in particular, in Vietnamese social network context, of which the number of studies has yet to be prevalent In addition, through this study, the researcher would like to raise social awareness on victim blaming’s adverse influence on judgment and empathy for victims in Vietnamese context Finally, this study aspires to serve as one of the bases for reference and comparison in future studies of the same subject matter

1.5 Organization

This research is organized into five main parts, namely Introduction, Literature review, Methodology, Data analysis and Findings, Discussion and Conclusion Brief content overview of each part is specified as follows

Chapter 1 (Introduction) provides an overview of the research problem, states the research questions, defines the scope of the study, as well as its contribution to the existing literature

Chapter 2 (Literature review) presents definitions of key concepts and associated issues related to the topic of this research It summarizes studied findings about victim blaming and social network popularity and influence on users’ attitudes when making comments

Chapter 3 (Methodology) explains the methods this study utilizes to acquire and analyze the data It includes the sampling, data collection and data analysis method

Chapter 4 (Data analysis and Findings) analyzes and presents the results

of the study and discuss their meanings The data will be coded and categorized into different themes and sub-themes

The final chapter, Chapter 5 (Discussion and Conclusion) concludes this study’s investigation and answers the research question Implications for students and researchers for future research, along with this paper’s limitations, will be discussed

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Background information

2.1.1 The Grays incident (Essex lorry deaths)

Serving as the basis for this study, the Grays incident, or Essex lorry deaths, certainly caused an uproar on a global scale as one of the most severe human smuggling in lorry cases disclosed to the public On 23 October, 2019,

39 corpses were discovered in the trailer of a refrigerator truck in Grays, Essex, the United Kingdom The casualty was initially reported to be 39 people, presumably of Chinese nationality After exhaustive investigation attempts from multiple authorities had been completed, it was officially confirmed that all deceased passengers were indeed Vietnamese This confirmation delivered a devastating blow and utter shock to not only the victims’ families, but also to the Vietnamese community The Vietnamese government made public statements that condemned human smuggling and requested other countries’ assistance in preventing future recurrences (BBC News, 2019) In the aftermath of the tragedy, the public got into another argument about covering fees for transporting the deceased’s bodies back to Vietnam Neither the British nor the Vietnamese government agreed to sponsor the flight, with the latter offered to pay in advance if the victims’ families would return that money later This decision triggered a group of Vietnamese people into demanding justice for the deceased on social network

As the incident occurred quite recently to this study’s conduction, the shortage of reliable referential materials is presumably expected, and there is much left unexplored regarding this incident Stephens (2019) summarized underlying theories and causes leading to the tragedy It is known that most of the victims hailed from two of Vietnamese underprivileged provinces, namely Nghe An and Ha Tinh (BBC News, 2019) The latter suffered gravely from a water pollution crisis in the year 2016 with the Formosa Chinese Steel Corporation incident (Mollman, 2016) Consequently, about 40,000 locals who make their livings in the fishing and tourism market went unemployed and thus,

prompting them to resort to other methods to earn money This was theorized as part of the reason why Ha Tinh is considered a central point for smuggling people to the United Kingdom (Stephens, 2019) Those who wished to escape their poverty may have contacted human smugglers to transport them across borders, with the prospect of making a fortune once their job is finished The price for such journeys tends to be out of the impoverished’s reach, thus sometimes forcing these people to incur debts from usurers These unauthorized immigrants are expected to carry out heavy labor, which almost exclusively belongs to underground economy (e.g., drug production), without any rights and privileges upon their arrival at the destinated country

Notably, thematic literature shortage poses a challenge to select reliable pivotal concepts that this study based its foundation on While the empirical research body on examining social network users’ attitudes about catastrophic and tragic events is rich enough, their discoveries may not necessarily be applicable in this instance The quantity of studies focusing on immigration-related issues is much more limited in comparison to that of popular cases about rape, racism, and natural disasters In a similar fashion, a number of themes discussed in this study (e.g., victim blaming on social network in immigration’s case) share the same struggle Unauthorized immigration and human smuggling are by no means solely restricted to Vietnamese Similar cases have been discovered in previous years, with a remarkably high number of participants from developing or undeveloped countries However, as the Essex lorry deaths incident is the first publicized case about unauthorized immigration in Vietnam,

it is especially difficult to find similar sources to compare the findings

2.1.2 Facebook’s influence in Vietnam

According to public statistics documented in 2018, Facebook is the largest social networking service with 2.3 billion monthly active users (Wilberding & Wells, 2019) Similar to other social network services, Facebook users are content creators They can connect with multiple people regardless of location, ‘follow’ each other, and share their daily stories, photos, videos, and

viewpoints on issues Unlike Twitter, which is another prominent social network service, whose users are only able to write maximum 140-word tweets for Asian languages and 280-word ones for non-Asian languages (Rozen, 2017), Facebook does not limit its content’s wordcount, thereby allowing users to discuss complex and controversial matters in full detail Whereas Instagram is another social network application that fares better with the youth overall, it is not the prime platform for intense discussion

Data from the 2018 Global Digital report from We Are Social Inc and Hootsuite suggests that an astonishing 57 out of 96 million Vietnamese are active social media users, and the average time they spend on using social media per day is approximately 2.5 hours A 2019 survey on social media platform popularity in Vietnam reveals that Facebook reigns as the most dominant social network with an overwhelming 56.83% of Vietnamese social media users (StatCounter, 2019) In a report released by We Are Social in 2017, Facebook in Vietnam had approximately 64 million accounts, and 46 million of which are active ones, making Vietnam rank seventh in the top ten countries with most active Facebook users (We Are Social Inc & Hootsuite, 2017; VnExpress International, 2017) Facebook growth has yet to see a decrease ever since Hence, it is currently the dominant platform for news coverage and online discussions in Vietnam, which explains why the number of posts and replies regarding the event on Facebook far exceeds that of any other social networking site As such, these findings suggest that a growing body of Vietnamese internet users acquire news primarily from the Internet

With the rise of social network comes the emergence of a new influential faction – the social media influencers, or Internet celebrities They are high-profile individuals who obtain fame and notability through their actions on the Internet (Freberg, Graham, McGaughey, & Freberg, 2010) As social networking services witnesses a boom in the 2010s, the extent to which an everyday someone can boast their influence on others is certainly considerable (Abidin, 2018) As opposed to traditional celebrities whose voices often undergo

filters to suit specific needs (e.g., politics), an ‘ordinary’ person, as argued in Grindstaff (2011), refers to someone who is not famous through being an expert

or a celebrity, and is willing to expose parts of their private life that are captivating enough to attract the public The researcher also placed emphasis on their nature being not necessarily “average”, “typical”, or “representative” of a particular group Therefore, their emotions and/or utterances concerning specific incidents would not seem monitored, but appear to be more candid and familiar

to most other people, hence their voluntary acceptance and devotion Through informative media such as blogs, tweets, or posts, social media influencers’ viewpoint on events has quite the capacity to manipulate many of their viewers’ train of thoughts For social network influencers who possess a high degree of cultural capital, their speeches stand an even higher chance of persuading readers into believing what they see To illustrate, if an Internet celebrity, recognized for their vast amount of knowledge on social issues, expresses disapproval at a new policy and elaborates why they do so, then the majority of their followers will most likely react in a similar fashion, regardless of the content’s authenticity In certain instances when financial privileges are concerned, information validity may even be neglected Multiple studies about digital marketing strategies have verified that followers respond more willingly and positively to influencer marketing than they do traditional promotion campaigns (Gould, Gupta, & Grabner-Kräuter, 2000; Tessitore & Geuens, 2013) Considering Facebook’s dominance in Vietnam, it is not uncommon to see these influencers exploit their virtual power to shape the public’s thought to their benefits

2.2 Key concept -Victim blaming

Victim blaming has been defined by various scholars to have multiple shades of meaning, and is most frequently associated with racism It has a history that originated from the Second World War (Adorno, 1947) Originally,

it was used to describe one of the notable Fascist traits, which is collectively interpreted as the “contempt for everything discriminated against or weak” (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950, p.57) A prominent

example for this is the myth that Jews went “like sheep to the slaughter” (i.e., voluntarily) in the Holocaust This notion suggests that Jews are partly responsible for their sufferings and death Middleton-Kaplan (2014) proposed that this is a form of victim blaming

Ryan (1971) defined “blaming the victim” as an ideology serving as the justification for racism and social injustice against black people in the United States During this stage, victim blaming has evolved from open prejudice, vulgarity, and reactionary tactics to a more subtle approach Yet, it still retained its former similar discriminative essence In practice, the ideology shifts the emphasis from the victim’s hereditary inferior or defective nature to environmental causation, such as poverty or social injustice On the surface, this may seem humane to victims since it advocated for the notion that their stigma

is environmentally and socially constructed However, said stigma still, in fact, exists within the victims Victim blaming practitioners thus could be charitable

to the victims’ defect, criticize unjust social conditions from before, and “ignore the continuing effect of victimizing social forces” right now, all at the same time Therefore, it is “a brilliant ideology for justifying a perverse form of social action designed to change, not society, as one might expect, but rather the society's victim" (Ryan, 1971, p 7)

In current times, victim blaming is defined as a social phenomenon where the victim(s) of a crime or an accident is held accountable for the crimes committed against them (Canadian Resource Center of Victims of Crime, 2008) Apart from racism, victim blaming is now more frequently associated with various violent crimes such as violence against women, sexual assault, sex trade workers, and homicide The phenomenon is most commonly correlated with two social psychological concepts, namely the Just-world hypothesis, and the Defensive attribution hypothesis Firstly, the Just-world hypothesis, as interpreted in Dalbert (2001), assumes a person’s improper doings will bring morally fair consequences (i.e., punishments) to them (Lerner, 1965; Kleinke & Meyer, 1990; Dalbert, 2001) As such, people may view the victim(s) of a crime

or disaster as morally wrong, and whatever tragedy happened upon them is merely payback for their evil deeds in the past For example, the victim of a rape case could be criticized for her lecherous manners, or seductive attire that seduced the rapist (Lakshmi, 2013) Set in the East-Asian culture where there is

a firmly established emphasis on balance, and a sense of security is vital to maintain social order, individuals very often refer to the Just-world belief to acknowledge the threat, foresee the consequences, and assess their and others’ actions

Based on the Just-world theory, Niemi and Young (2016) published a collection of studies on the role of moral values or reasonings that can alter the attitudes of bystanders toward victims, such as viewing them from "injured" to

"contaminated" The researchers introduced “individualizing values” and

“binding values” According to them, everyone has a mix of both these conflicting values, but in different ratio While people who side more with individualizing values tend to be more fair-minded and focus on protecting the victim from negative attitudes, others exhibiting binding values (i.e., loyalty, obedience to authority, and purity) are more likely to protect group interests and express stigmatizing attitudes towards victims An increase in the belief that the victim’s behavior could have changed the outcome of their tragedy is apparent

in people with high binding values and low individualizing ones (Niemi & Young, 2016) For instance, a person of such kind may wonder why a woman did not fight back her rapist or called for help to save herself, instead of putting the blame on the perpetrator’s actions In this case, the victim’s contemporary circumstance is often ignored The reason for this tendency could be because victim blamers were not present or have not experienced a similar situation, thus may not understand the context at the moment of crime Usually, these people would rely on their personal experience to propose sensible decisions the victim could have made during the situation As such, the victims’ side of the story would be considered unconvincing to victim blamers Such people would then tend to overlook the suffering and make judgments on the victim, regardless of the crime Niemi and Young’s framework model works for both sexual and non-

sexual crimes, regardless of politics and religions, which is of great value to this study in terms of data classification

The second theory that fundamentally establishes victim blaming behaviors is the Defensive attribution hypothesis It was first conceptualized in Walster (1966) as a phenomenon that occurs when an observer has a tendency to blame victims to minimize their fear of vulnerability if befallen by a similar tragedy The severity of blame has a proportional relationship with how negative

or positive the observer’s assessment of the victim is Specifically, the more resemblances the observer finds between themselves and the victim (e.g., age, sexual orientation, or personality), the less blame is placed upon said sufferer, and the more empathetic their response is (Shaver, 1970; Grubb & Harrower, 2008) The Defensive attribution bias is theorized as a form of deformed self-defense mechanism against possible future assaults on the observer (Shaver, 1970; Grubb & Harrower, 2008) Should the observer decide that the victim deserves their fate, it will translate to the former attributing more responsibility

to the latter Through this process, the observer achieves emotional stability as they subconsciously believe they can seize control if they happen to encounter a similar event, and thus have the capability to prevent the misfortune from occurring (Walster, 1966; Pinciotti & Orcutt, 2019) Despite its established causal relationship with victim blaming, this theory is still mostly prominent in studies about child abuse or sexual assaults (Muller, Caldwell, & Hunter, 1994; Pinciotti & Orcutt, 2019) Therefore, much room is left for literature expansion, considering that little attention has been paid to the defensive attribution theory’s role in analyzing victim blaming regarding unauthorized immigration reactions

Regardless of differences in definition and practice, victims who are subjected to victim blaming and unjust criticism almost always suffer from adverse psychological effects such as shame or traumas (Schroeder, 2016) The severity of such can lead to suicide or self-harm In cases where the victim(s)

has already passed away, their family members or relatives may not be exempted from negative opinions

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 3.1 Data collection

The researcher chooses to use Facebook as the instrument for data collection, particularly printing all comments in the original threads

The researcher collects different Facebook users’ discourses (posts) and related comments Then, the researcher filters analyzable comments and categorizes them This phase will discard comments that contain (1) spams (i.e., advertisement); and (2) tagging others without any further explanation or opinion (i.e., @username) Next, the discourses will be coded, and the ones that generate similar connotations will be tallied The results of which will ultimately

be categorized into themes and sub-themes of users’ attitudes

2,241 comments from four posts below were filtered to collect codable data Concise summaries of each post’s content are provided below

Post number (1) is both a personal hypothesis of the immigrants’ motives (i.e., becoming illegal cannabis plantation farmers) and a detailed description about the human smuggling process in frozen containers The author wrote in a rather descriptively condolent and neutral approach As such, their story is devoid of direct accusations towards any involved parties This narrative to the point of collection remains the most popular amongst the four original public posts with more than 16 thousand affirmative Facebook reactions (i.e., like, love, and sadness), approximately 1.7 thousand comments, and 9.3 thousand shares Most of the replies share a similar attitude with the author, and only a minor faction either disagreed or responded with irrelevant content

Post number (2) is a brief list of multiple matters which the author considered relevant to the incident, as well as their perspective on the event

Overall, their standpoint is quite impartial, but a little less sympathetic than the first post This writer straightforwardly attributed the incident to a number of explicitly stated causes (i.e., poverty, distrust in the government, and lack of proper education) This post has also received much approval from netizens with over 9.5 thousand affirmative reactions, approximately 400 comments, and about 350 shares A number of respondents regard this post as being the most unbiased among popular influencers’ accounts of the incident

Post number (3) is a complete contrast of the aforementioned, in which the author vehemently condemned the deceased of committing a serious crime and therefore, did not deserve sympathy In short, this post is a collection of reasons explaining why the writer possesses such an acrimonious and apathetic attitude towards 39 unauthorized immigrants While this post is by far the least popular in terms of reaction and share count, its respondents replied with overwhelmingly exclusive consent These users appear to exude apparent satisfaction at the victims’ unfortunate outcome

Post number (4) differs from the other ones, respecting its indirectly provocative nature This post was written as a response to the Vietnamese government’s official announcement about returning the corpses or ashes of the victims to their families at a cost The author displayed dissatisfaction and annoyance at said document, and wished to rally the public against the authorities for that decision As expected, plenty of Facebook users were triggered by this version of incident interpretation and demanded rational exposition from the government for the sake of the victims Nevertheless, clashing opinions were just as prevalent in the comment section In total, this post received 2.1 thousand reactions, about 150 comments, and 120 shares The reasons the researcher selected these particular articles on Facebook are because:

(1) Facebook is currently the most prominent platform for news report and online discussions in Vietnam These articles are made public to the society and still remained intact until the data collection process ended;

(2) The original authors of these posts all possess a certain degree of popularity with many Facebook users These influencers’ posts usually receive hundreds to thousands of affirmative reactions, comments, and shares In other words, the number internet users who they can create an impact on are numerous Overall, their stances during controversial cases, such as this incident, receive much support and approval from their followers The ratio of users who hold contrasting viewpoints to them may be as insignificant as under 0.1% (11 out of 1,709 comments in the first post);

(3) The longer and more informative their posts are, the more constructive comments, either for or against the idea, they receive Two of the original posts contain information that may encourage people who harbor inferior complex to make aggressive, insulting, and vulgar comments putting the blame on both the victims and Vietnam’s current ruling party, for example These controversies are the most important source of codable data for inspection; and

(4) After news about the incident and the press have quiet down, discussions about it received few new comments and reactions Thus, the majority of data will remain unchanged and will not alter the results of the research by a significant margin

3.2 Data analysis

The coding process begins with the researcher dividing each comment or post into smaller sections Then, the researcher identifies the chunks of text that have underlying meaning, and assigns an appropriate label for each of them It should be noted that because of ethics consideration, all names and aliases are pseudonyms for respective Vietnamese Facebook users; and all gender pronouns will be removed in favor of using the neutral pronoun ‘they’ Next, the researcher tries to arrange the labels of a section in causal order so as to yield the

user’s message Finally, messages with similar connotation are grouped together under a theme or sub-theme, clarifying the results of the study

Being a qualitative study, the researcher assesses and filters data by relying mostly on the Just-world theory and Defensive attribution theory if a comment shows signs of being derogative towards victims; on subjective judgment if it involves sympathy and condolences, or arguments about the government’s responsibility in the incident

The examples below are extracts of the whole discourse

o ‘[…] Cảm thương cho số phận ai đó, lên án người khác […]’: personal judgment

o ‘[…] Tương lai 39 […] ngày hôm nay […]’: intensity of problem

o ‘[…] Tương lai của mình, bản thân còn chưa lo xong […]’: personal interests, condition

o ‘[…] đừng đòi hỏi […] hạn chế tương lai của họ […]’: resolution

o ‘[…] tương lai của những công dân […] chó gặm à? […]’: consequence

 The speaker means putting ahead personal or group interests that could threaten the whole community’s welfare without prior investigation and understanding will guarantee severe consequences for all parties;

 Denying the deceased undocumented immigrants’ citizenship and rights since they have committed treasonable acts (e.g., destroying their passport) – victim blaming;

 Emphasizing polarization (the difference between the ones who are proper citizens and the people who stripped themselves off that right)

o ‘Đến khi đi du học […]’: possibility

o ‘[…] rớt visa […]’: consequence

o ‘[…] tại CS […]’ (abbreviation: Cộng Sản – The Communist Party

of Vietnam, the founding and absolute ruling party): cause

o ‘[…] =)))) […]’: mark of sarcasm

 The speaker here implies sarcasm in other opposers’ incredulous notion of blaming every mishap in their life on the government’s shortcomings

CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS

4.1 General findings

Of all four posts and 2,241 included comments, there are 1,302 user’s opinions that can be categorized under certain criteria regarding meanings It is expected that a number of thematic opinions with minor appearance rate are not included in the final results, and sub-themes with multiple similarities will be grouped comprehensively Overall, the researcher discovered that three major themes have emerged from the qualitative content analysis, namely Victim blaming, Victim support, and Arguments about the government’s responsibility Major themes and relevant sub-themes will be summarized in Table 1 below Table 1

Qualitative content analysis of Facebook discourses about the Essex lorry deaths incident

Theme Sub-theme/content Victim blaming Disregard of individual’s

circumstance and Baseless assumptions

Othering (labelling, sarcasm, memes, and vulgarity)

Victim support Condolences for the victims

Explanation and/or speculation of the victims’ circumstance

Spreading knowledge of the event

to friends and/or relatives Arguments about the government’s

responsibility

Condemning the government for their weaknesses

against Defending the government’s policies

Figure 1 Showcasing different attitudes in popular Facebook discussions about the Essex lorry deaths incident

From these snippets, general findings suggest that the majority of victim blaming comments rely on a number of moral values, namely loyalty, obedience to authority, and purity to make their judgment According to Niemi and Young (2016), individuals with high level of moral values tend to concentrate more on attacking victims, with the undocumented immigrants as the victims here In addition, while the Just-world theory and Defensive attribution hypothesis may not be outwardly realized by the common public, most of the replies seem to resort to their principles to make claims against the victims, with the popular reasons being:

(1) They did this to themselves, which explains why the tragedy befallen them is a fitting consequence;

(2) They must have been too greedy to abandon their own nationality; and (3) They were ready to violate the laws despite being consciously aware of their doings, thus cannot be sympathized with because they have nothing

in common with a respectable citizen

Common reasonings among these Facebook users’ victim blaming comments are:

(1) Disregard of individual’s circumstance to generalize a common picture (binding values included) and Baseless assumptions Victim blamers usually assume that the unauthorized immigrants must have been plotting evil crimes to make illegal money For example, becoming workers in cannabis plantations is a popular hypothesis among victim blaming practitioners

(2) Othering (labelling, sarcasm, memes, and vulgarity – multiple and varied usage frequency): calling the deceased with nouns signifying power distance between groups such as ‘criminals’ or ‘scumbags’

4.2 Findings and discussion

In this section, the researcher will provide detailed interpretation of each theme and sub-theme, along with multiple examples, to elicit fundamental meanings and their interrelations Specifically, translated quotations from the discourses will be provided to exemplify the themes Since most of the collected discourses are written in Vietnamese, the researcher is required to translate them into English However, Vietnamese is a language that differs vastly from English in grammar, expressing manners and degree, and thought articulation

As a result, neutral English translations would not be enough to help decipher some users’ true intentions, while faithful translations are hard to achieve and need other’s viewpoints to ascertain Therefore, variability was expected to happen in a controlled quantity The researcher thus acknowledges that any vulgar words or expression will be translated faithfully Also, the researcher will try to retain direct translation from Vietnamese to English with the fewest possible number of grammar and language use editions to avoid creating extra shades of meaning

4.2.1 Victim blaming

Facebook users whose stances expressed harsh criticism at the deceased and varying degrees of satisfaction over their mishap fall under the same category of victim blaming instance While this theme has 287 comments, which accounts for approximately 22.04 percent of the total number of comments, it is noteworthy due to victim blaming’s constant presence in every single post the researcher collected The extent to which such commenters receive consent from the netizen community also suggests its growing popularity Detailed examinations of such attitude in the comments can be found below

4.2.1.1 Disregard of individual’s circumstance and Baseless assumptions

A recurring tactic used by Vietnamese social network users who make victim blaming comments is disregarding the victims’ circumstance to generate

a common picture of them In the context of this case, the majority of this tactic’s usage seems to stem from the limited public disclosure on the deceased’s private information

In this instance, two of the influencers have already used the term

“strawmen” to address the victims, which generates a negative feeling for readers According to HH_01, “strawmen” are

[…] people who accept that their lives will henceforth be as worthless as straw and weed, […] discard their original passport and nationality to enter a foreign country, […] live in a problematic community with no government who controls or protects them […] work illegally in secret cannabis farms, dreaming of changing their miserable fates and returning home with a fortune after a few years […]

As a result, netizens have constructed a common identity for the victims

to accuse them of the illegal immigration crime without becoming ethically guilty Three out of the four original public posts claimed that the undocumented immigrants travelled to Britain to work in illegal cannabis farms, which has yet

to be officially confirmed by the government

Labelling the unauthorized immigrants as guilty people, social network influencers’ statements indicate an unquestioned belief amongst Vietnamese Facebook users who do not approve said people’s actions In particular, it is an unspoken norm that all 39 deceased immigrants came to England to make dirty money by working in the cannabis industry This belief, coupled with the fact that those immigrants have committed the crime of illegal immigration, urged bystanders to create an identity for them Specifically, this collective identity is that all the victims hailed from ambitious families who were willing to abandon their nationality in exchange for mass money laundering In addition, the wealth status of each family plays a decisive role in criminalizing the victims

As derived from Janoff-Bulman, Timko, and Carli (1985), forethought knowledge is essentially the basis for victims’ actions during the moment of crime Even when victims are most likely unaware of the outcome information, victim blamers automatically presume that they do As a result, there appears to

be a subconscious belief that victims should have been able to prevent their tragedy from happening (Janoff-Bulman et al., 1985) Because of this, several Facebookers also attempted to give advice and warnings as if they had experienced such dilemmas before It is worth mentioning that these users assume the ‘strawmen’ identity stated earlier to be right

If you have a billion [VND] (equivalent to approximately 40,000 USD) to pay (in cash

or in property) [for smugglers], you’re not poor at all […]

(HQB_1)

If you hate cannabis dealers that much, shouldn’t you also condemn cannabis farmers? [They are criminals too] Don’t ever blame your own poverty

(GL_1) They can’t be poor if each of them paid human smugglers a billion [VND] … this happened because of their greed and lack of understanding

(LHN_1)