As a researcher, I am often inundated with dense, unapproachable language that requires so much background knowledge, context, and overall patience that I reach cognitive load levels quickly and have to reread or take a break. It's much worse when trying to communicate research to a general public who probably has much less background knowledge and context than I do. Why do we insist on doing things this way? It's small wonder the populace at large considers academics to be of limited value.
One possible solution is the notion of information visualization, or infoviz, as a way to better communicate data and information (per Bellinger, 2006) through graphics or other sensory input. Although, it's important to remember that infoviz is typically not standalone, and the best examples are used to help tell a story, not being the story alone.
Some recent examples I came across:
Nathalie Miebach and her exploration of weather data as sculpture and music
Although, I found that I liked Aaron Koblin's visualizations better, and certainly found his longer (18 minutes) timeframe more conducive to greater detail and really understanding what the hell is going on:
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