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Chapter 6142given to the issue by using text only. As shown in other studies (Kress, 2010; Van Leeuwen, 2001), the visual can reveal an underlying message, often an ideological one, which makes an image–text message multi-layered. In the context of a policy controversy, this multi-layered meaning can reveal something about the perspective on the controversial issue. Thus, when a negative textual message about harmful foods appears alongside visualisations focussing on the attractiveness of these visually appealing foods, it is important to note the visuals’ focus on how difficult it is to escape these harmful foods. This particular way of visualising harmful foods perhaps reflects that the surrounding is considered an essential element influencing an individual’s food choices and therefore part of the problem. Hence, the specific way chosen, even unconsciously, to visualise a textual message, among endless available ways of doing so, adds new information to the expressed perspective communicated about the controversial issue.6.2.3 CirculationThere are three main conclusions about the role of the circulation of online visualisations in policy controversies. First of all, I conclude that in online policy controversies about contested technologies, the meaning visualisations convey may change over time, in different ways. When a change takes place in visualisations that circulate within-platform, the composite image–text meaning changes because visualisations are accompanied with various pieces of text that might even be about topics that have nothing in common. For example, in our dataset, a specific visualisation was used on websites in the context of milk/lactose and also parenting.Second, the meaning of online visuals changes across platforms. The meaning of composite image–text changes because visualisations are accompanied by various pieces of text; additionally, it changes also because platforms vary in their affordances and the ways they encourage interaction. Websites, for example, do not have the same space limitations as Twitter. Hence, visualisations on websites, together with their accompanying text, are often shown, in our dataset, to give more complex meaning to the topic than they give on Twitter. Most studies about cross-platform circulation of visualisations gather big data and make conclusions about the phenomena of circulating across platforms and the characteristics of the platforms on which the visualisations circulate (e.g., D’Andréa & Mintz, 2019; Pearce et al., 2020). This thesis shows the potential of cross-platform analysis to Efrat.indd 142 19-09-2023 09:47