© 2025 SURF
Ulus Baker (1960 – 2007) was a Turkish-Cypriot sociologist, philosopher, and public intellectual. He was born in Ankara, Turkey in 1960. He studied Sociology at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, where he taught as a lecturer until 2004. Baker wrote prolifically in influential Turkish journals and made some of the first Turkish translations of various works of Gilles Deleuze, Antonio Negri, and other contemporary political philosophers. His profuse and accessible work and the novelty of the issues he enthusiastically introduced to Turkish-speaking intellectual circles, earned him a widely spread positive reputation in early age. He died in 2007 in Istanbul.The text in this edition is edited from essays and notes Ulus Baker wrote between 1995 and 2002. In these essays, Baker criticizes the sociological research turning into an analysis of people’s opinions. He explores with an exciting clarity the notion of ‘opinion’ as a specific form of apprehension between knowledge and point of view, then looks into ‘social types’ as an analytical device deployed by early sociologists. He associates the form of ‘comprehension’ the ‘social types’ postulate with Spinoza’s notion of ‘affections’ (as a dynamic, non-linguistic form of the relation between entities). He finally discusses the possibilities of reintroducing this device for understanding our contemporary world through cinema and documentary filmmaking, by reinstating images in general as ‘affective thought processes’.Baker’s first extensive translation to English provides us with a much-needed intervention for re-imagining social thought and visual media, at a time when sociology tends to be reduced to an analysis of ‘big data’, and the pedagogical powers of the image are reduced to data visualization and infographics.
MULTIFILE
Depicting news graphically is considered an apt way to deal with two challenges of modern journalism: to disclose big data, and present the news attractively, visually, and fast to grasp. Newsrooms try their hand at it and are figuring out how to organize production of information visualizations effectively. This study delves into reported obstacles and challenges for the production of news visualizations and suggests that enhancing the quality of information visualization in news media, asks for a clear view on what information visualization means for the production of news, rather than only stimulating journalist to acquire new skills
In her inaugural lecture, Sabine Niederer presents visual methodologies that take into account the contemporary state of digital images and demonstrates how visualizations may be put to use for collaborative research.
In recent years, the use of visualizations or infographics in the news has become increasingly popular. We know, however, surprisingly little about how news consumers use and appreciate news visualizations. We apply a mixed-method approach to answer these two questions. First, we conduct an eye-tracking study that measures use, by means of direct attention to visualizations on three different news platforms (print newspaper, e-newspaper on tablet, and news website). Second, we conduct focus groups and a survey among readers of three news media to study the extent to which news consumers actually value the inclusion of visualizations in the news. Our results show that news consumers do indeed read news visualizations, regardless of the platform on which the visual is published. We also find that visualizations are appreciated, but only if they are coherently integrated into a news story and thus fulfill a function that can be easily understood. With this study, we provide the first comprehensive picture of the usefulness of information visualizations in the news, and contribute to a growing literature on alternative ways of storytelling in journalism today.
LINK
In recent years, the use of visualizations or infographics in the news has become increasingly popular. We know, however, surprisingly little about how news consumers use and appreciate news visualizations. We apply a mixed-method approach to answer these two questions. First, we conduct an eye-tracking study that measures use, by means of direct attention to visualizations on three different news platforms (print newspaper, e-newspaper on tablet, and news website). Second, we conduct focus groups and a survey among readers of three news media to study the extent to which news consumers actually value the inclusion of visualizations in the news. Our results show that news consumers do indeed read news visualizations, regardless of the platform on which the visual is published. We also find that visualizations are appreciated, but only if they are coherently integrated into a news story and thus fulfill a function that can be easily understood. With this study, we provide the first comprehensive picture of the usefulness of information visualizations in the news, and contribute to a growing literature on alternative ways of storytelling in journalism today.
LINK
