Beyond the scorecard diplomacy: From soft power rankings to critical inductive geography

Abstract

The article interrogates if data visualization, despite its inherited subjectivity, can be used not only as a tool for data representation but also as a research platform to facilitate an iterative exploratory process to identify new themes, raise new questions, and generate new knowledge. It addresses this task by pursuing a twofold research goal. On the one hand, it confirms previous findings that have documented the political power of data visualization specifically in the field of scorecard diplomacy. It critically discusses Portland Soft Power 30 Index that measures soft power of selected countries on the annual basis to reveal how the scorecard diplomacy works through the ranking dashboard. On the other hand, the article reflects on the experience of designing a geo-visualization system that, by contrast, intended to overcome shortcomings of data visualization’s politics to build a platform for an inductive academic research. It discusses a new deep mapping framework of soft power visualization that intended to address several critical problems of Portland’s measurements and shares research insights from the project “Deep Mapping: Creating a Dynamic Web Application Museum Soft Power Map.”