| Abstract: | Scholarly interest about online advocacy in authoritarian settings is rapidly growing. With one of Asia's most active social media, Vietnam offers a promising site to investigate how online advocates navigate around state censorship to influence regulatory decisionmaking. Much research about online advocacy focuses on rational discourse, and fails to ask why satire and ridicule can change regulatory outcomes when reasoned debate fails. This article considers two cases studies where online advocates changed regulatory outcomes in Vietnam. It investigates why the regulators were sensitive to moral censure in social media, and responded to appeals for solidarity, but were reluctant to engage in rational public deliberation. These findings reveal insights into how online advocacy can trigger emotional responses in officials that transform the regulatory environment. The article concludes that rather than constituting cognitive missteps, emotions are integral to government regulation in Vietnam. |
