title: The rhino horn trade, transnational organised crime and Vietnamese state-run media: The news framing of enforcement of laws against the illegal trade in rhinoceros horn in the Vietnamese digital newspapers
Creators: name: Smith, Michael
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Vietnam
subject: media reporting
subject: illegal wildlife trade
subject: rhino horn trade

description: An illicit trade in rhino horn from Africa, particularly South Africa, to Vietnam is threatening the survival of the species. This thesis has explored the news framing of the rhino horn trade as a criminal issue in Vietnam, a major trafficking hub and market country since 2008. It focuses on an important time when Vietnam faced and responded to international pressure - from a series of global Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) conferences and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) - to take greater action to combat this trade. Using a qualitative approach, derived though a constructivist epistemology, this study employs news framing theory as a tool to explore the news media stories of rhino horn trade in Vietnamese digital newspapers from 2016 - when Vietnam signalled its political will to fight the trade - to 2020. The sources linked to particular frames within these texts were analysed and semi-structured interviews with the framers of these texts - Vietnamese journalists, personnel from environmental non-government organisations (ENGOs) and an expert in Vietnamese journalism - were conducted. The study finds that framing indicates a 'war on the rhino horn trade' approach that is reminiscent of other 'war on crime' strategies applied, for instance, in the United States of America and the United Kingdom. With this 'war' approach, the accent in Vietnam tends to be on tougher sentences for rhino horn couriers, which is quite unhelpful at reducing the crime, rather than finding solutions to underlying issues and bolstering investigations into rhino horn trade 'kingpins'. It was found that Vietnamese officials, ENGOs and international sources - including the United Nations, foreign embassies and security actors - were included in deliberations in the news. Indeed, framing around Serious Crime and Compliance owes much to the strong reliance of Vietnamese journalists on press releases from official and ENGO sources. Despite demonstrating that such frames have been introduced to the Vietnamese news media landscape by the global elite - suggesting that a transnational public sphere is operating - this study argues supranational organisations and international actors can only influence the Vietnamese state-run media under Vietnam's own terms. Specifically, the study finds that Vietnamese news media presents the Criminality meta-frame by initially problematising it through a series of Serious Crime frames, emphasising the magnitude of the problem, and then framing the government's political will, determination and commitment in dealing with the issue through a series of Compliance frames. Criticism of this compliance narrative is presented through Lack of Enforcement frames; this is not, however, prolific in the text. The prevalence of Serious Crime and Compliance frames and the dearth of Lack of Enforcement frames observed in the news is coupled with Vietnamese journalists' strong reliance on press releases and press conferences, particularly from Vietnamese official sources. This suggests that journalists may be straying outside of the government narrative sparingly and cautiously given the politico-cultural confines of an authoritarian media system. The interviews with journalists suggest that, rather than the news being a place where opposing frames openly collide, journalists carefully navigate the eddies of Compliance and Lack of Enforcement frames with politico-cultural dexterity borne through professional experience in navigating Vietnam's authoritarian media system.