ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an historical overview of visuality and focuses on how images and image-producing technologies have become omnipresent in the daily life, in such a way that this also influences the contents and shaping of public policy processes. It conceptualizes them as a technological system which operates in a specific social, economic, cultural and political environment. This system consists of specific elements that interact with each other in order to produce and circulate these visual events. The chapter also presents a structured overview and focuses on the occurrences of visuality in the pre-industrial era, then move to the industrial era and finally in the digital era. Furthermore, the development of new visual technologies, starting with the camera and the role of photography and up to now leading to the emergence of all kinds of social networks, has led to a radicalization of the access to these technologies.
