On Digital Media Risks, Intensive Parenting, and Glocal Tensions: Public Discourse and Parents’ Experiences in Vietnam

Abstract

Amid rapid technosocial change, public anxiety surrounding digital media risks has heightened, subjecting parents to expectations of intensive parenting. Parents from the Global South must grapple with cultural tensions between their children’s global media landscape and local everyday practices. This study investigates how the Vietnamese public and parents debate digital media risks, the ideology of intensive parenting in a digital age, and relevant “glocal” tensions. Deploying netnography, the data set comprises 43 news articles, 1,460 public comments, and 6 online interviews. The public and parents agreed on 1 dominant ideology of intensive parenting that involves hypervigilance of the children’s media access and consumption. Class plays a crucial role in explaining the variations of parenting practices. While the conservative Vietnamese public and less wealthy parents deemed YouTube a cultural threat to traditional Vietnamese values, middle-class Vietnamese parents championed YouTube’s global merits in preparing their children for opportunities beyond their local setting. These findings call for more culturally nuanced theorization of global media platforms’ influence on parenting practices in underexamined societies where glocal tensions remain pronounced.