AUTHOR=Duc Tran Minh 
  
TITLE=Policy terminology, administrative interpretation, and cultural and creative industries governance: evidence from Vietnam’s transitional policy context
  
JOURNAL=European Journal of Cultural Management and Policy
  
VOLUME=Volume 16 - 2026
  
YEAR=2026
  
URL=https://www.frontierspartnerships.org/journals/european-journal-of-cultural-management-and-policy/articles/10.3389/ejcmp.2026.17546
  
DOI=10.3389/ejcmp.2026.17546
  
ISSN=2663-5771
  
ABSTRACT=This article examines how policy terms with different administrative status are interpreted in Vietnam’s governance of cultural and creative industries (CCIs). The study draws on seventeen documentary sources (sixteen official policy/administrative texts and one independent field assessment), eight official speeches, public statements, and policy announcements, and ten focal participant records generated through semi-structured interviews and field-based consultations or observations. Cultural industries is the clearest codified national category: it makes the field administratively legible but does not resolve jurisdictional overlap. Culture-oriented language is interpreted through established cultural-policy mandates, while broader or hybrid terms function chiefly as shared vocabularies for cross-organisational discussion rather than evidence of coordinated funding, implementation, or decision-making. Creative-city and creative-hub language widens the range of participating actors without demonstrating a restructuring of formal authority. On this basis, the article distinguishes four interpretive processes—delimiting, legitimating, coordinating, and reconfiguring—and separates formal codification from implementation and practitioner vocabulary. The case is most relevant to the digital and social/institutional dimensions of the triple transition; the data do not support a separate green-transition finding.