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Visual and Textual Framing by Coalitions in a Policy Controversy834However, (visual) information shared on the internet not only gives insights into how a digital public understands food issues but also influences the way people think about food and discuss it (Lupton, 2018). Visual and textual information spread in the digital world shapes public views (Clancy & Clancy, 2016) and policies (Metze, 2020; Wozniak et al., 2017). This digital world is often seen as experimental (Marres, 2017, p. 147), where the boundaries between experts and laypeople are re-defined (Lupton, 2018; Rousseau, 2012), and information is heavily mediated by algorithms (Lewis, 2018; Rogers, 2019). Hence, the diverse interpretations of food online may not only represent expert knowledge and the exiting digital cultures of processed food but it can also affect the societal debate about it, which is related to decision-making, as happened, for example, in the case of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and other food-related issues (De Cock et al., 2016; Inghelbrecht et al., 2014).Although framing in text and visuals in newspapers and new media is recognized as influential in various academic studies (Krause & Bucy, 2018; O’Neill, 2013; Redden, 2011), actors’ sentiments in combination with these visual and textual framing has not received much scholarly attention. To fill this gap, this paper sets out to further develop the notion of online sentiment coalition – a group of actors that predominantly express positive, negative, or balanced sentiment about an issue on their websites – and examines the particular ways in which they frame processed food. This will provide insights into people’s understanding of the notion of “processed food” and the meaning that is given to it by various online interpretive communities (see Yanow, 2000).The research question in this paper is: how do online sentiment coalitions visually and textually frame processed food? To answer this question, we studied (1) which online actors belong to which sentiment coalitions and (2) what discursive and visual framings they use.4.2 Conceptual framework: Online sentiment coalitions and their textual and visual framingInspired by automated sentiment analysis, we categorize online publics (Marres & Rogers, 2005) that form around processed food in three groups: those that express Efrat.indd 83 19-09-2023 09:47