1. 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
- Author
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Smith, Michael and Smith, Michael
- Abstract
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, Thesis (PhD Doctorate), Doctor of Philosophy, School of Hum, Lang & Soc Sc, Arts, Education and Law Group
- Published
- 2024