Abstract

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.
Issue Section:
 Full Paper
© The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of EADH. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com
This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)