{"id":15071,"date":"2026-05-11T12:43:40","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T12:43:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/portfolio\/eduardo-rojas-padilla\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T12:43:58","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T12:43:58","slug":"eduardo-rojas-padilla","status":"publish","type":"us_portfolio","link":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/portfolio\/eduardo-rojas-padilla\/","title":{"rendered":"Eduardo Rojas Padilla"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":true},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":true},"author":7,"featured_media":15072,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"us_portfolio_category":[45],"class_list":["post-15071","us_portfolio","type-us_portfolio","status-publish","post-password-required","hentry","us_portfolio_category-new-template"],"acf":{"naam_van_het_proefschift":"Picture This:","samenvatting":"Onze samenlevingen zijn hypergeconnecteerd en gemediatiseerd door sociale media en andere online communicatiemiddelen. Deze fundamentele verschuiving in communicatie heeft invloed gehad op de manier waarop mensen deelnemen aan democratie, politiek en beleid. Visualisaties spelen een steeds belangrijkere rol in deze participatieve online dynamiek, maar zijn een onderbelicht subveld gebleven in de beleidswetenschappen. Dit proefschrift onderzoekt de rol van visualisaties die op sociale media circuleren en de manier waarop zij beleidsoverstijgende controverses en processen be\u00efnvloeden.\n\nHet proefschrift richt zich op de rol van visualisaties in de online controverse over de regulering van CRISPR-Cas-technologie in de Europese Unie, de Verenigde Staten en de Mercosur-regio. De online controverse biedt een interessante casus om te onderzoeken hoe visuele framing-dynamiek op sociale media controverses katalyseert en beleidsprocessen in verschillende politieke contexten be\u00efnvloedt. Visualisaties \u2014 memes, foto's, ontworpen afbeeldingen, infographics, diagrammen, enz. \u2014 werden belangrijke instrumenten waarmee maatschappelijke actoren en het publiek in het algemeen betekenis gaven aan complexe biotechnologische innovaties en hun betekenis voor de toekomst.\n\nMethodologisch combineert de studie grootschalige kwantitatieve sociale netwerkanalyse van Twitter-data (2015\u20132019) met kwalitatieve multimodale framing-analyse. Retweet-netwerken zijn geclusterd om multimodale online discourscoalities (MODCs) te identificeren. De resultaten typeren vijf rollen die visualisaties spelen: als instrumenten om betekenis te geven, emotionele triggers, discursieve objecten, culturele iconen en weergaven van normen en waarden. De studie laat zien hoe technocratische discoursen zich grensoverschrijdend rond CRISPR-Cas verzamelen, terwijl een invloedrijke Franstalige coalitie een normatief\/ethisch discours kristalliseerde dat CRISPR-Cas koppelde aan 'GMO-baby's'. Dit hielp om een technocratisch debat te openen voor bredere maatschappelijke zorgen, wat uiteindelijk leidde tot een restrictief regelgevingskader in de EU.\n\nTen slotte biedt het proefschrift een heuristiek (de LANDFOR-toolbox) voor praktijkmensen om visualisaties op een meer ge\u00efnformeerde en strategische manier te gebruiken. De essentie is dat visualisaties geen loutere illustraties zijn, maar centrale componenten van een multimediaal discours waarmee actoren de toekomst van nieuwe technologie\u00ebn vormgeven. Het erkennen van de visuele dimensie is essentieel voor een meer reflexief en inclusief bestuur van opkomende (bio)technologie\u00ebn.","summary":"Our societies are hyperconnected and mediatized through social media platforms and other online communication tools. This fundamental shift in communication has impacted the ways people find to participate in democracy, politics and policy. Visualizations play an increasingly relevant role in these participatory online dynamics, however, they have remained an understudied subfield in policy sciences. This dissertation examines the role of visualizations circulating on social media and the ways they influence policy controversies and processes. The dissertation focus on the role of visualizations in the online controversy over the regulation of CRISPR-Cas technology in the European Union, the United States, and the Mercosur region, and how these regiones decided on distinct regulatory frameworks. The online controversy builds around the development of a groundbreaking genome editing technology and provides an interesting case to research how visual framing dynamics in social media catalyzes policy controversies and influences policy processes in different political contexts. In a modern world of hyperconnected networked societies, visualizations\u2014memes, photographs, designed images, infographics, diagrams, etc.\u2014became important devices through which societal actors and the public in general made sense of a complex topic like a genome editing biotechnological innovation and its meaning for the future. \n\nPrevious academic literature on visualizations is rich but fragmented across communication sciences, political science, sociology, semiotics, and art and humanities; it tends to focus either on individual cognition, news effects, analyses of iconic cases, political campaigns, or offline media. However, it pays less attention to the large-scale, dynamic role of visuals in online policy controversies, especially over technological innovations. We know that online images can frame information and emotions, circulate fast, and travel across languages and geographical regions, but we still lack an integrated account of how online visual framing dynamics influence policy controversies, help constitute coalitions of actors, and the way these coalitions matter for policy processes. In particular, policy and governance literature had not yet systematically connected the gap between visual framing, the emergence and evolution of digital networks, policy controversies and the politics of particular topics, like governing (bio)technological innovations such as CRISPR-Cas.\n\nIn response to this research need, this dissertation aims to understand the influence of visual framing dynamics on the online policy controversy over CRISPR-Cas technology across three regulatory contexts (the EU, USA, Mercosur). The central research question is: What is the influence of visual framing dynamics on the online policy controversy over CRISPR-Cas technology in three different regulatory contexts? It is unpacked into four sub-questions: (RQ1) How do visualizations influence policy and politics? (RQ2) What are the multimodal online discourse coalitions (MODCs) and their associated visual and textual framings of CRISPR-Cas in Twitter debates around the 2018 regulatory decisions in the EU, USA, and Mercosur? (RQ3) How do MODCs emerge and gain traction in the public debate about regulating a novel technology such as CRISPR-Cas? (RQ4) How can actors in the science\u2013policy\u2013society (SPS) nexus use visualizations in more informed and strategic ways?\n\nMethodologically, the study combines large-scale quantitative social network analysis of Twitter data on CRISPR-Cas debates (2015\u20132019, in English, Spanish and French) with qualitative multimodal framing analysis of highly retweeted visuals and accompanying text. Retweet networks are clustered to identify multimodal online discourse coalitions (MODCs); comparing their dominant visual and textual frames, sentiment and storylines. Furthermore, a longitudinal analysis of an MODC in the French case traces the emergence and evolution of discourse coalitions in membership constitution, opinion leaders\u2019 activities, and framing and network dynamics over the five year period of the controversy in Europe. \n\nThe dissertation produces four main results. First, a literature-based research typifies five roles visualizations play in public debates\u2014 as sense-making devices, emotional triggers for political gains, discursive objects, cultural icons, and representations of norms and values. This framework for understanding roles of visualizations in policy and political sciences conceptualizes visuals as traveling boundary objects whose meanings are negotiated across groups of actors online and may shift over time. Second, a comparative Twitter study introduces the concept of Multimodal Online Discourse Coalitions (MODCs) and shows how technocratic discourses assemble transnationally around CRISPR-Cas in all languages. The technocratic discourse, dominant in English and Spanish debates, visually frames CRISPR as a precise, novel technology and is mirrored in USA\u2019s and Mercosur\u2019s regulatory approaches. In contrast, an influential French-language MODC crystallizes a normative\/ethical discourse that visually connects genome editing with CRISPR-Cas with genetically modified organisms (GMO) technology through a visual framing of CRISPR-Cas as a \u201cGMO baby\u201d making technology. Reframing the debate from what the technology is to what it does and whom it affects. This normative discourse helps open up a technocratic debate to ethical and societal concerns, a discourse that is also mirrored in imposing a restrictive GMO regulatory framework decision in the EU. A complementary contribution of the comparative study is the relevance (and suitability) of visuals in the normative framing of a novel technology. Third, a longitudinal study of the French is the empirical base to propose a five-stage developmental model of influential MODCs \u2014emergence, growth, adaptation, influence and legacy\u2014 demonstrating how shifting visual framings, coupled with key actions from opinion leader (adopting roles as agenda setters, sense-makers, and\/or political opportunists), can translate online discourses into policy controversies and traction in offline policy process. Furthermore, a key contribution of the longitudinal study is to propose the conceptualization of online visualizations as tools for the monitoring of online debates. The systematic tracing and clustering of visualizations in online debates is shown as a strategic tool for monitoring the emergence and evolution of controversies over novel technologies online. They also serve as a reliable mapping mechanism for understanding who the key actors of a controversy are, what groups constitute online coalitions over time, what their framing of novel technologies is and it\u2019s evolution during a controversy, and potentially, what agendas these coalitions pursue. Finally, the last contribution is a heuristic for practitioners that offers guidance on how to use visualizations in a more informed and strategic way. The heuristic \u2013 operationalized through toolbox of sequential activities summarized in the acronym LANDFOR \u2013 invites actors in the science-policy-society nexus to use visuals online in a three-step process of (1) understanding the visuals used in controversy along a cognitive\u2013normative spectrum where always images convey both sense-making and normative information, (2) use future-oriented visual scenarios to reflect on acceptable and unacceptable technology trajectories for society, and (3) strategically deploy the five roles of visuals to engage, bridge, or contest online coalitions without assuming that images in online policy controversies are either neutral or fully controllable. These results describe a view of visualizations in online controversies as a) complex, flexible features facilitating the informative and normative framing and sense-making of novel technologies, b) as forging and shaping elements of online discourse coalitions in social media platforms, and c) as discursive manifestations of public participation in the governance of novel technologies and the shaping of public its policy processes. \n\nOverall, the dissertation argues that visuals are not mere illustrations but central components of multimodal discourse through which actors construct futures for novel biotechnologies, include or marginalize voices and shape regulatory paths that can both \u201cclose down\u201d debate by reinforcing technocratic discourses and \u201copen up\u201d spaces for alternative values, actors, and futures, with sensitive consequences for the governance of novel (bio)technologies. Moreover, this dissertation proposes that recognizing, theorizing, and strategically engaging the visual dimension of policy controversies is therefore crucial not only for understanding past regulatory outcomes in the CRISPR-Cas case but also for navigating future struggles over emerging technologies in more democratic and reflexive ways. \n\nFinally, the dissertation advices the reader that overlooking visualizations in the governance of novel technologies is not merely a communication oversight but a political risk that could potentially halt reaping the benefits of developing and adopting technological innovations. It invites to see visuals not as decorative add-ons to \u201cserious\u201d textual debates; but central to how publics and policymakers come to see discourses over novel technologies like CRISPR-Cas as solutions, threats, or both. Visual framing dynamics can entrench power structures in technocratic closures that marginalize valid societal concerns and problem perceptions, but they can also democratize highly technical debates by bringing ethical, cultural, and experiential perspectives into view. Recognizing and engaging with this visual dimension is therefore essential for more reflexive, inclusive, and responsible governance of emerging (bio)technologies, and potentially any other policy issue in mediatized societies. Furthermore, guarding these online spaces where contesting discourses are forged and disseminated is an absolute necessity for keeping healthy democratic debates and societies alive in the digital era.","auteur":"Eduardo Rojas Padilla","auteur_slug":"eduardo-rojas-padilla","publicatiedatum":"29 mei 2026","taal":"EN","url_flipbook":"https:\/\/ebook.proefschriftmaken.nl\/ebook\/eduardorojaspadilla?iframe=true","url_download_pdf":"https:\/\/ebook.proefschriftmaken.nl\/download\/7d9941bc-2ca7-4b3e-a6e0-65474997347f\/optimized","url_epub":"","ordernummer":"18686","isbn":"978-94-6534-369-3","doi_nummer":"","naam_universiteit":"Wageningen University","afbeeldingen":15073,"naam_student:":"","binnenwerk":"","universiteit":"Wageningen University","cover":"","afwerking":"","cover_afwerking":"","design":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/us_portfolio\/15071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/us_portfolio"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/us_portfolio"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15071"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/us_portfolio\/15071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15074,"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/us_portfolio\/15071\/revisions\/15074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"us_portfolio_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/us_portfolio_category?post=15071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}