Division of Institute of Culture and Information, Vietnam Institute of Culture and Information, Hanoi, Vietnam.
As many other communist countries, Vietnam has very strict regulations on disseminating information to public. It hardly says this is good or bad, positive or negative but it is obviously not good atmosphere for democracy and free press. New media has come to Vietnam not quite later than other regional countries. After sometimes development, some evidences show that these new media have helped social democratization in this country. The importance is that new media are breaking the spiral of silence which existed such a long time in Vietnam's society, and many changes have occurred to the way people express their ideas thanks to those media. In Vietnam new media are not only their own to create democracy. It still need social reforms and efforts of political leaders. Those vital elements have correlations with each other. This paper presents the role of new media on social democratization in Vietnam's context and give some examples to show the trend of that process.
