Sunday Onsite Presentation Session 1

South-East Asian Studies

Session Chair: Ho Keat Leng

09:30-09:55

70644 | A Look into the Historical Background of Manga Publication in Vietnam

Tran

Thi Nguyet Anh, Doshisha University, Japan

The stormy history of Vietnam in the modern age had lasting impacts upon the way of the current Vietnamese government in dealing with cultural products, especially foreign media products in order to protect to national security as well as enhance national identity in the new era of globalization. Thus, the focus on the censorship upon media products, in the case of Japanese manga, can shed more light upon the prohibited topics and the mechanism of shaping the public’s perception of the authority. Moreover, the transformation of Vietnamese publishers from pirated production to licensed publication implicated the ability to adapt of local market to the process of globalization. Yet the role of Vietnamese fans had been underrated much to the age and social discrimination of Japanese manga since the beginning due to the lack of knowledge when come in touch with new forms of media after decades of disconnection to global culture in Vietnam. Thus, in this study, I argue that the role of local publishers and manga fans were equally significant in the development of manga market in Vietnam while confronting the tight censorship of the local authority.

09:55-10:20

68955

| The Poem “Ordinary Days” by Y Nhi and the Picture of the “Imagined Community” in Modern Vietnamese Literature

Hong Anh Nguyen, Ho Chi Minh City University of Education, Vietnam

Community discourse often dominates in modern Vietnamese literature, expressing the idea that community is associated with tradition, history, and culture, especially in the war and post-war period. Amidst that general trend, Y Nhi’s poetry is a breakthrough and creative poetic style. Although Y Nhi (1944 - ) belongs to the Vietnam-American war poets, she soon follows her own path, innovating the form of poetry and renovating the content of her writings. Until now, Ý Nhi’s poetry is not only one of the most famous representatives of modern Vietnamese poetry but also internationally recognized with the 2015 Cikada Prize. One of her poetic innovations is the construction of the community image. We find the cultural theory of “imagined community” in “Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism” by Benedict Anderson (1936-2015) as a theoretical tool that is worthwhile to help us analyse the image of the community in the poem “Ordinary Days” by Y Nhi. Applying this theory, the article proves that the poem builds a new community image, not connected by tradition, history, or causal time, but by the “imagined” with simultaneity and empty time. The change in the concept of community in the poem preceded the Vietnamese literary movements at that time, partly supporting the evolution of Vietnamese literary style in the later period.

10:20-10:45

71098

| Social Media Marketing: A Comparison of Informative and Normative Influence on Instagram

Jun Jie Calvin Quek, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Ho Keat Leng, Aston Institute, Hong Kong

Social media marketing is effective as consumption behaviours can be affected through social influence on social media. Social influence can be in the form of informative influence where consumers are influenced by credible sources of information or normative influence where influence is achieved through the desire to conform to expectations of others. The aim of this study is to examine the effectiveness of the two main types of social influence in social media marketing in Singapore. 154 respondents were recruited for this study. They were assigned to one of three groups. Respondents in all the groups viewed an Instagram post of a fictitious brand of sports shoes and were tasked to indicate the perceived quality and purchase intention of the sports shoes. In the second (n=52) and third group (n=52), respondents were provided with additional information in the form of informative and normative comments to the post respectively. A one-way analysis of variance showed that there was a significant difference between the groups in the perception of quality of the shoes (F(2,151)=17.09, p<.01) with respondents in the informative group reporting significantly higher scores. In addition, a one-way analysis of variance showed that there was a significant difference between the groups in the purchase intention of the shoes (F(2,151)=11.90, p<.01). Respondents in the informative group again had a significantly higher score compared to other groups. This suggests that only informational social influence is effective in influencing consumer behaviour in social media marketing.