ABSTRACT
This chapter develops a more profound understanding about the way visual culture is taking over the world of policy making. It introduces four concepts that may help us to grasp the changes that are taken place: (1) the emergence of visual ecology that stresses the interplay between technological development and socio-political developments; (2) the emergence of a political economy of the visual which stresses the importance of looking at the infrastructure that is used for the production and distribution of visual events, and the changes that take place within this infrastructure; (3) the emergence of a visual polity, which helps to understand the changes that occur in the organization of politics and policy making due to the emergence of new and advanced visual technologies, and (4) the democratic context in which this visual polity emerges. The penetration of visual technologies in the society offers a source of power that can be used to exercise discursive power.
