Page 148 - Demo
P. 148


                                    Chapter 6146visualisations are valuable objects for gaining insights into the controversy. Sometimes it is good to read the image (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2021). Zooming in on visualisations enables noticing their details – the exact content presented, how it is being represented (e.g., from a low angle or eye-bird view), and what specific qualities visualisations have (e.g., dark or bright colours). However, sometimes the patterns between the visualisations in their context reveal what is at stake in the policy controversy. Zooming out enables identifying patterns – repeated content, dominant means of representation, prevalent qualities – and associating these patterns with other information available on the controversy. Tacking back and forth between noticing the specific elements visualisations employ and acquiring an overview of their use in a controversy ensures that visualisations’ full potential as objects offering insights into the controversy is thoroughly explored.Online visualisations can serve as accessible objects for better understanding of the attitudes and concerns of actors in a policy controversy. Examining a visualisation or a group of visualisations used by actors in a controversy, one can try to infer why a particular way of visualising was chosen, intentionally or not, among endless options of doing so. An answer to this question may provide an extended and more nuanced understanding of the views and concerns of the actors. Trying to infer why a particular way of visualising was chosen can guide controversy analysts in their attempts to understand the controversial issue from an actor’s point of view (or a group of actors’) point of view and can help virtually elucidate the actors’ interpretation of the situation or issue.6.4.2 Recommendations for visualisersActors of all types should consider their visual presence online. This thesis shows that online, especially when the controversy intensifies, anti-actors often have a stronger visual presence. The thesis also shows that the Web is an important field of governance dynamics and that visuals plays a key role in these dynamics. Hence, actors of all types, including people and institutes who typically focus on other means of sharing information than websites and social media, should note their online visibility and visuality.When noticing online visibility and visuality, actors must be aware of visualisations’ ‘circulability’. This circulability means that visualisations might find their way to places different from those their authors intended them to be, with text different Efrat.indd 146 19-09-2023 09:47
                                
   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152