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1Introduction171.4.1 First aspect of meaning-making (sub-question 1): Type and ContentThe first aspect of meaning-making in this conceptual framework is about the type and content of the visualisations. This aspect takes place in two specific stages, also referred to as sites or moments: the production-process of the visual and the meaning-making embedded in the visual itself. The meaning-making sites come from Rose’s (2016) framework of four ‘sites’ in which the meaning of a visualisation is made: (1) production, (2) the image itself, (3) circulation and (4) ‘audiencing’. Drawing on Rose’s earlier framework and other sources, O’Neill and Smith (2014) further develop Hall’s (1980) conceptualisation of ‘moments’ in visualisations’ communication process and identify three such moments: production, (visual) text and consumption. For Hall, O’Neill and Smith, Rose and other authors who take the approach of stages of meaning-making, each stage (or site, or moment) influences the meaning of a visualisation in a particular way. The image itself, for example, for Rose, includes spatial organisation, which offers a particular viewing position and hence creates a specific effect. The moment of consumption, for O’Neill and Smith, affects the ‘interpretive package’ (see also Gamson & Modigliani, 1989) that visualisations offer, which helps people construct meaning about an issue (O’Neill & Smith, 2014, p. 81). Although authors who use an approach that attends to stages of visualisation meaning-making usually acknowledge that these stages are intertwined, in conceptual terms they approach them separately.The first aspect of my conceptual framework, type and content, is situated in the stage of production and the stage of the image itself – or in Hall’s (1980) words, the (visual) text. In the stage of production, the technology in which a visualisation was produced results in a specific visualisation type. This type ‘may contribute towards the effect they [visualizations] have’ – types such as a photograph, map or diagram, have an effect on a visualisation’s meaning, and that is mostly because they raise specific expectations about it (Rose, 2016, p. 27). As an example of expectations associated with a particular visualisation type, Rose gives a photograph, and more specifically a photograph belonging to the street photography genre, which aims at capturing life as is. This photograph, according to Rose (2016, pp. 27–29), is expected to show the viewer some truth. However, nowadays, when referring to digital visualisations, the consideration of the expectations that particular types of visualisations raise should be made with caution, given the accessibility of technologies that enable editing and manipulating visualisations with ease (Rose, 2016, pp. 4–7).Efrat.indd 17 19-09-2023 09:47