Mapping Museum Soft Power: Adding Geo-visualization to the Methodological Framework

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities. 2019. No. 34(4). P. 730–751.

Grincheva N.

The article proposes, justifies, and tests a new methodological framework to
measure museum ‘soft power’ by employing geo-visualization as a new
method empowered by the rapid development of digital humanities. This research
not only demystifies the buzz term of ‘soft power’ that is frequently
applied in relation to contemporary museums and their international cultural
engagements but also develops an evaluation framework to assess museum capacities
to exert global impacts. Specifically, the article draws on the academic
scholarship outlining a plethora of approaches for ‘soft power’ evaluation,
including Resources, Outputs, Perceptions, and Networks evaluation models. It
argues for a new integrative approach that can comprehensively combine different
methods to construct a more advanced tool to measure museum ‘soft power’.
The article draws on preliminary results of developing a digital mapping system
to assess museum soft power. It shares findings from the pilot project, Australian
Center of the Moving Image (ACMI) on the Global Map, designed in collaboration
with the ACMI in Melbourne.

Keywords: soft power, museums, Cultural heritage map, geo-visualisation