Giang Nguyen-Thu
Biographic Data
| ID | 907990 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Giang Nguyen-Thu |
| GIVEN NAMES | Giang |
| FAMILY NAME | Nguyen-Thu |
| SIGNATURE | NGUYEN-THU G |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Queensland |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0067-9223 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 16 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Making life ‘platform ready’: Care and platform economy beyond the multisided market
Taming the Algo: Grab Bikers Grappling With Platform Logics From Below
How do workers conceptualize a platform’s algorithm and adjust their practices to its logic? To pursue this question, we draw on an ethnography of Grab, the leading rideshare platform in Southeast Asia, composed of 60+ trips talking to drivers on the back of bikes in Hanoi, and in-depth interviews with 10 drivers. From this rich material, we identify a strategic cluster of practices that we term “taming the algorithm.” Taming requires three key m…
Four Bottles of Wine,” a Communist Trial, and the Digital Attention Economy in Vietnam
Taming the algorithm: The platform realism of GrabBike delivery workers
How do workers conceptualize a platform’s algorithm and adjust their practices to its logic? To pursue this question, we draw on an ethnography of Grab, the leading rideshare platform in Southeast Asia, composed of 60+ trips talking to drivers on the back of bikes, and 10 in-depth interviews. We identify a distinct set of moves that workers perform to survive on the platform, a strategic cluster of practices we term “taming the algorithm.” These …
Memory, comparison, and reciprocal commensuration: Searching for the socialist 'bad life' in aspirational Vietnam
From hope to haunt: Digital activism and the cultural politics of hope(lessness) in late-socialism
This article explores the formation and diminishment of collective hope in Vietnam by tracing the Facebook-based circulation, intensification, and attenuation of affective engagement with the Đồng Tâm land dispute in Hanoi from April 2017 to September 2020. The dispute enables us to conceptualize online activism as essentially fueled by collective embodiment of hope, understood as temporalized openness toward the ‘not-yet’ that stretches beyond p…
Hectic slowness: Digital temporalities of precarious care from a Global South perspective
This article explores the temporal entanglements of care and precarity in Vietnam by unpacking the condition of “hectic slowness” experienced by mothers who sell food on Facebook against the widespread fear of dietary intoxication. Unlike the common association of “slowness” with an absence of activity, these trader-caregivers’ experience of “slowness” is defined by an overwhelming pressure of childcaring chores, casualized jobs, and intensified …
From wartime loudspeakers to digital networks: Communist persuasion and pandemic politics in Vietnam
This commentary discusses the overall propaganda win of the Vietnamese government for its COVID-19 success and reveals the underlying logics of communist legitimacy in the wake of digital and biological virality
Television in Post-Reform Vietnam: Nation, Media, Market
This book explores Vietnamese popular television in the post-Reform era, that is, from 1986, focussing on the relationship between television and national imagination. It locates Vietnamese television in the experiences of everyday life and the prevailing network of power relations resulting from marketization and globalization, and, as such, moves beyond the clichéd assumption of Vietnamese media as a mere propagandist instrument of the party st…
Vietnamese Media Going Social: Connectivism, Collectivism, and Conservatism
June 2018 was an intense time in Vietnam when one saw the role of social media in revealing and facilitating the (dis)congruity between connectivism, collectivism, and conservatism. On June 12, the National Assembly of Vietnam passed the controversial Cybersecurity Law by a landslide of 86 percent agreement despite widespread public dissent, including an online petition signed by more than sixty-five thousand people. The new Cybersecurity Law was…
Nostalgia for the New Oldness: Vietnamese Television Dramas and National Belonging
This article uses the Foucauldian framework of governmentality and the particular concept of dispositif to analyse two Vietnamese television dramas, Hanoian (1996) and The City Stories (2002). I argue that the first drama presents a memory dispositif of the recent wartime to express dissatisfaction about contemporary situations. Meanwhile, the second drama sought to build a 'new yesterday' to engage Vietnamese viewers in the ongoing economic tran…
Vietnamese Media Going Social: Connectivism, Collectivism, and Conservatism
June 2018 was an intense time in Vietnam when one saw the role of social media in revealing and facilitating the (dis)congruity between connectivism, collectivism, and conservatism. On June 12, the National Assembly of Vietnam passed the controversial Cybersecurity Law by a landslide of 86 percent agreement despite widespread public dissent, including an online petition signed by more than sixty-five thousand people. The new Cybersecurity Law was…
Taming the algorithm: The platform realism of GrabBike delivery workers
How do workers conceptualize a platform’s algorithm and adjust their practices to its logic? To pursue this question, we draw on an ethnography of Grab, the leading rideshare platform in Southeast Asia, composed of 60+ trips talking to drivers on the back of bikes, and 10 in-depth interviews. We identify a distinct set of moves that workers perform to survive on the platform, a strategic cluster of practices we term “taming the algorithm.” These …
Hectic slowness: Digital temporalities of precarious care from a Global South perspective
This article explores the temporal entanglements of care and precarity in Vietnam by unpacking the condition of “hectic slowness” experienced by mothers who sell food on Facebook against the widespread fear of dietary intoxication. Unlike the common association of “slowness” with an absence of activity, these trader-caregivers’ experience of “slowness” is defined by an overwhelming pressure of childcaring chores, casualized jobs, and intensified …
From wartime loudspeakers to digital networks: Communist persuasion and pandemic politics in Vietnam
This commentary discusses the overall propaganda win of the Vietnamese government for its COVID-19 success and reveals the underlying logics of communist legitimacy in the wake of digital and biological virality
Making life ‘platform ready’: Care and platform economy beyond the multisided market
Nostalgia for the New Oldness: Vietnamese Television Dramas and National Belonging
This article uses the Foucauldian framework of governmentality and the particular concept of dispositif to analyse two Vietnamese television dramas, Hanoian (1996) and The City Stories (2002). I argue that the first drama presents a memory dispositif of the recent wartime to express dissatisfaction about contemporary situations. Meanwhile, the second drama sought to build a 'new yesterday' to engage Vietnamese viewers in the ongoing economic tran…
Television in Post-Reform Vietnam: Nation, Media, Market
This book explores Vietnamese popular television in the post-Reform era, that is, from 1986, focussing on the relationship between television and national imagination. It locates Vietnamese television in the experiences of everyday life and the prevailing network of power relations resulting from marketization and globalization, and, as such, moves beyond the clichéd assumption of Vietnamese media as a mere propagandist instrument of the party st…
Vietnamese Media Going Social: Connectivism, Collectivism, and Conservatism
June 2018 was an intense time in Vietnam when one saw the role of social media in revealing and facilitating the (dis)congruity between connectivism, collectivism, and conservatism. On June 12, the National Assembly of Vietnam passed the controversial Cybersecurity Law by a landslide of 86 percent agreement despite widespread public dissent, including an online petition signed by more than sixty-five thousand people. The new Cybersecurity Law was…
From wartime loudspeakers to digital networks: Communist persuasion and pandemic politics in Vietnam
This commentary discusses the overall propaganda win of the Vietnamese government for its COVID-19 success and reveals the underlying logics of communist legitimacy in the wake of digital and biological virality
Hectic slowness: Digital temporalities of precarious care from a Global South perspective
This article explores the temporal entanglements of care and precarity in Vietnam by unpacking the condition of “hectic slowness” experienced by mothers who sell food on Facebook against the widespread fear of dietary intoxication. Unlike the common association of “slowness” with an absence of activity, these trader-caregivers’ experience of “slowness” is defined by an overwhelming pressure of childcaring chores, casualized jobs, and intensified …
From hope to haunt: Digital activism and the cultural politics of hope(lessness) in late-socialism
This article explores the formation and diminishment of collective hope in Vietnam by tracing the Facebook-based circulation, intensification, and attenuation of affective engagement with the Đồng Tâm land dispute in Hanoi from April 2017 to September 2020. The dispute enables us to conceptualize online activism as essentially fueled by collective embodiment of hope, understood as temporalized openness toward the ‘not-yet’ that stretches beyond p…
Four Bottles of Wine,” a Communist Trial, and the Digital Attention Economy in Vietnam
Taming the algorithm: The platform realism of GrabBike delivery workers
How do workers conceptualize a platform’s algorithm and adjust their practices to its logic? To pursue this question, we draw on an ethnography of Grab, the leading rideshare platform in Southeast Asia, composed of 60+ trips talking to drivers on the back of bikes, and 10 in-depth interviews. We identify a distinct set of moves that workers perform to survive on the platform, a strategic cluster of practices we term “taming the algorithm.” These …
Memory, comparison, and reciprocal commensuration: Searching for the socialist 'bad life' in aspirational Vietnam
Taming the Algo: Grab Bikers Grappling With Platform Logics From Below
How do workers conceptualize a platform’s algorithm and adjust their practices to its logic? To pursue this question, we draw on an ethnography of Grab, the leading rideshare platform in Southeast Asia, composed of 60+ trips talking to drivers on the back of bikes in Hanoi, and in-depth interviews with 10 drivers. From this rich material, we identify a strategic cluster of practices that we term “taming the algorithm.” Taming requires three key m…
Making life ‘platform ready’: Care and platform economy beyond the multisided market
Political science (9 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies (7 works) · Law (5 works) · Art (4 works) · Chinese history and philosophy (4 works) · Politics (4 works) · Digital Economy and Work Transformation (3 works) · Linguistics (3 works) · Public relations (3 works)