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Chapter 118In the stage of the image itself (or the (visual) text), the content of a visualisation, what is depicted in it – e.g., people, landscape, food – reveals what is ‘said’ in the visualisation in a straightforward way (Rose, 2016, pp. 85–86) and therefore helps in examining its meaning. Noticing the content of a visualisation – typically by defining content categories and quantifying each category’s prevalence in a dataset – enables making ‘general statements … about aspects of representation which non-specialists, journalists and experts alike can understand’ (Bell, 2001, p. 13). Quantifying the prevalence of content categories can also reveal whether visual content is unique to a topic. This is important because unique imagery can affect public discourse (Pentzold et al., 2019), contribute to the construction of political narratives (Baker & Walsh, 2020) and increase the chances of the topic being acknowledged as a political and public problem (Doyle, 2014). Additionally, statements about content prevalence can lead to in-depth discussions when the quantifying of content prevalence is contextualised by examining other aspects of meaning-making (e.g., circulation, see below), which put the quantitative results in a broader social context (see Aiello & Parry, 2020, pp. 209–232).Visual content should be considered in combination with the means used to produce it (Aiello & Parry, 2020, p. 5); in this thesis, the type and content are addressed as a single aspect of the meaning of a visualisation. Hence, the first subquestion is:What patterns of type and content can be revealed in an online policy controversy?1.4.2 Second aspect of meaning-making (sub-question 2): NarrativeThe second aspect of meaning-making in my conceptual framework, narrative, attends to meaning that is made at the connotative level of visualisations, where visual signs are read in a ‘connotive’ way (Rose, 2016, p. 121) and ideas or concepts that are attached to them are revealed, based on widely accepted conventions (Rodriguez & Dimitrova, 2011, p. 56). In this type of reading, it is recognised that a narrative can be narrated in visualisations through the use of specific visualisation type and content. As such, it is linked with the first aspect of meaning, type and content. However, narratives can also be ‘told’ using specific techniques, such as taking a photograph from a particular angle. These techniques can result in specific qualities which can construct particular narratives (Rose, 2016).Efrat.indd 18 19-09-2023 09:47