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

Currently I am working on the article that proposes and justifies 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 & Outcomes, 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 explains why previously proposed evaluation approaches could be significantly improved through geo-visualization techniques. It justifies an increasing need for Deep Mapping as a more advanced mixed methods tool, by exploring the geographical dimension of museum “soft power” on different levels of existing “soft power” evaluation approaches.