There's overwhelming evidence that infographics are extremely effective at catching people's attention, and thatthat  sticking ability isn't going away. In fact, 3M conducted a study that found visuals are processed in the brain over 60,000 times faster than text.

The brain craves infographics because we suffer from information overload: the average attention span has dropped to 8 seconds since 1980 and people only read 28% of what they see.  Our eyes are neurally networked to take in a visual scene in under 1 second while it takes 250 seconds to recognize, then assign meaning to symbols (think of each word in a sentence as a symbol). This explains why 80% of people are more willing to read an infographic--and they learn and retain information 32% better as a result too.

It's become clear that writing papers and getting grants won't cut it in academia anymore.  Many tenure-track professors, especially those non-applied sciences, argue that layperson outreach and science communication are superfluous extensions of "cold, hard science" (see Reddit thread). To such skeptics, let me point out a correlation, and to that, attach a hypothesis:

The the cycle of science explains why climate change researchers recently saw a cut in their funding, with low layperson education on climate change: