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Visual and Textual Storylines by Coalitions in a Policy Controversy753contribute to polarization between the two coalitions and to increasing the tension between them.3.5 Discussion of the visual storylinesThe visual and the quality of seeing have been used as a means of engaging in a democracy as noticed, for example, in Rosanvallon’s (2008) notion of counterdemocracy, Keane’s (2009) monitory democracy, and Green’s (2010) ocular democracy. These writers emphasize the role of the eye in supervising political acts of governments and other actors. Green (2010), specifically, assigns great importance to the visibility of unplanned occurrences that constitute a politician’s everyday life. According to him, these unpredictable events and their uncontrolled visuality are inherently part of politics (Green, 2010, p. 20). What does the study of the degree of coherence between discursive and visual storylines contribute to this notion? The practice of visualizing by a discourse coalition makes the discursive storyline – the collection of ideas, verbal statements, and storylines – visible, perhaps in the same way that spontaneous events reveal something about political leaders. A high degree of coherence between the visual and the discursive storylines, especially when visualizing done unthinkingly, might reflect sincerity and honesty – ‘candor’, in Green’s (2010) words. These qualities are valuable in policy controversies in a democratic society.Our analysis shows that visual and discursive storylines can create a coherent whole. When this happens within a discourse coalition, actors that use the visual narrative form a visual discourse coalition (VDC), a network of actors that share a similar discursive storyline and a similar visual storyline of the controversy. Actors belonging to the same VDC interpret reality in a shared way and may also be connected to one another through shared associations – because visuals have a unique quality of relying on their audience’s associative world in their reasoning (Clancy & Clancy, 2016). Thus, in the flammable faucet example, an association between yellow flames coming from a drinking water tap and risk is needed to strengthen a storyline of environmental risk.Another quality of visualizations stands out due to the fact that they seemingly offer evidence of something that is currently happening or has happened in the past Efrat.indd 75 19-09-2023 09:47