This unit examines media not just as tools of communication, but also how they shape what can and cannot be said and seen, and hence the sorts of societies we live in. Since the advent of cave painting, social and political power, and economic interest have been mediated by diverse forms of representation. In today's modern societies it is important to understand the nexus between power and the media. Never before have the forms of communication been so diverse and media so pervasive. The unit focuses on the roles that technologies of communication have played, primarily in the contemporary world. Topics include how the limits and differences of oral, written and visual languages have had an impact on ways of knowing and thinking about the world; the relationship between particular media, regimes of representation and social formations; the development of the image including the invention of perspective, photography and realism; virtuality; digital media and modernity; and theories of social control and media production and resistance.