ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the functions that visuality performs in order to understand the power potential of visuality. The power of visuality is based on the possible functions fulfilled by the creation of visual events. It expresses that the design, implementation and use of visual technologies can be defined as the outcome of a contingent process of social and political construction in which characteristics of technology also merge with specific socio-cultural, political and economic developments. The chapter considers the functions that visual technologies fulfil in terms of visualization, in terms of making things visible. It describes the political economy of visuality as the study of social relations, particularly the power relations and power resources that mutually constitute the production, distribution and consumption of visual events. The power that visual events and visual technologies might offer can be made understandable by analyzing at how this power is used to influence the content, course and outcomes of specific policy processes.
