HCM City (VNS/VNA) - Social media spreads information and disinformationrapidly, exerting a big influence on the public and businesses, and so theGovernment needs to have policies in place to manage and regulate it, a senioracademic has said.

Nguyen VanVen, director of one of the Ho Chi Minh City Open University’s two campuses, saidat a forum on communication and brand names in the digital age in HCM City onJuly 23 that it should also have a comprehensive legal framework for digitalcommunication.

It shouldalso set up a system to identify communication crimes to detect disinformationand fake news, he said.

Accordingto Nguyen Hai Trieu, co-founder and CEO of YouNet Media, there are 64 millionactive social media users in the country, up from 55 million last year.

Some 11million posts are uploaded every day and receive 60 million comments. There arean equal number of Facebook users in rural areas as in urban areas.

Socialmedia is having a big influence on society with its rapid dissemination ofinformation, while the number of communication crises on social media increased25 fold in 2017 from just two years earlier, according to Trieu. 

Businessexecutives attending the forum said their products and brand names were oftenfaked and published on social media, affecting their companies’ reputation.

Luu DinhPhuc, Director of the Authority of Press, said when enterprises face such asituation they should complain to the Authority of Broadcasting and ElectronicInformation.

Le XuanSon, Editor-in-chief of Tien Phong (Vanguard) newspaper, the event organiser,said it was very important that enterprises pay attention to the quality oftheir products instead of merely building their image on social media since thelatter could collapse rapidly.

Ho QuangLoi, Standing Vice Chairman of the Vietnam Journalists Association, said forenterprises to prevent disinformation, the information they provide needed tobe explicit.

"Usingtraditional media is the way to resolve communication crises on socialmedia," he said.

Trieusaid "people still trust traditional media and double check information onit".

Loi saidin an intensely competitive environment, where they compete by usinginformation, enterprises and the media should complement each other.

Lam MinhChanh, co-founder of Management and Startup Community, said many enterprisesused social media to build their brand name.

However,"building brand names is not merely done through advertising orcommunication," he said.

"Ina digital environment, consumers’ adverse assessments spread rapidly andwidely, and businesses need to be able to deal with this."

Vietnamhas more than 60 percent of its 96 million population using the internet. Eachperson uses the internet for more than seven hours a day, higher than theregional and world averages.-VNS/VNA