Mapping Global Impact of Hallyu, The Korean Wave

Since the late 1990s, South Korean creative sector emerged as a speedily developing industry of transnational popular culture production. It first populated the Asian markets such as Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, Hong Kong, and Singaporean with its media products including music and films. In the past decades, due to a rapid development of new media technologies and social media channels the Korean Wave or Hallyu spread all over the world beyond Asia and the Middle East, and currently has a significant presence in Europe, North and Latin America. Such a global attraction of the Korean Wave culture has incited a significant academic attention that resulted in multiple research projects, questioning: “Why has it taken off so dramatically at this point? Why popular (or not)? Why now? What does it mean socially, culturally, economically, and politically in global contexts?” Drawing on this scholarship, this project aims to advance the studies on the Korean Wave phenomenon even further by interrogating if new data-driven and machine learning approaches combined with traditional qualitative research insights could provide a more comprehensive account of the global impacts of Hallyu. It questions:

If and how could we interpret, understand, measure, and even predict the Korean Wave presence, impacts, and implications in different geolocations around the world, depending on local challenges and opportunities?

Read more here: https://datatopower.net/hallyu

The project aims to explore Hallyu as a highly complex global phenomenon that has different layers of manifestations across multiple stages of its existence from production to consumption and reproduction in transnational contexts. It employs data-driven interdisciplinary approaches and innovative methodologies, such as geo-visualisation and machine learning, to explore the Korean Wave by applying more holistic and comprehensive research design in order to capture its global dimension while paying attention to “translocal” and “glocal” contexts and impacts.

This project draws on the most research developments of developing a Data To Power Prototype, a geo-visualization application or a dynamic mapping software that allows to measure, map and predict soft power impacts on the global scale. With capabilities to create maps, timelines, and data cuts for a comparative analysis of data across geographies, time periods and subdivisions or programs, Data To Power data visualization system opens new horizons for mapping global impacts of Korean Wave on cultural, political, economic and social levels. In this way, beyond the traditional qualitative research methodologies, the project will employ multiple quantitative and mixed research methods enabled by the mapping application.