摘要:Through an analysis of a controversy about the accusations of “self-transformation” and “self-evolution”, formulated by the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) against Chu Hảo, an intellectual-member of the VCP, this paper aims to test the hypothesis whereby the existence of controversy would make possible coexistence in discord and thus democratize the public space in an authoritarian regime. Our analysis is based on the media coverage of this case produced over the last three months of 2018 and by two different sources: the Party-State’s official media (11 information occurrences) and social media (23 information occurrences from four websites and 8 Facebook’s entries). We will shed light on the procedures of polarization and the dialogical process that organize the co-presence of antagonistic discourses in the public space, but also on the facture that emerges from the camp of protesting intellectuals.