Philosophy of visual literacy: the role of infographics and visual thinking in social planning

The modern social and philosophical knowledge is characterized by its inclusion in the visual turn which means the desire of visual thinking not only to complement the rigorous conceptual discourse but also to build a new visual strategy for understanding social reality. Infographics is a key tool of visual thinking. It serves both as a graphical way of presenting information, data, and knowledge and as a method of extracting new non-trivial data from large amounts of information. The author believes that the emergent effects of visual thinking and infographics can effectively complement social and economic planning. The research briefly discusses the visualization of the problems of social planning and demonstrates their role in specification and understanding of social forecasting and planning programs. The paper presents the case studies for social infographics and defines the key concepts of the infographic understanding of social forecasting.