User:Alexblenkin/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Influence of mass media

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because I have in interest in marketing and mass media is a common platform for marketing to reach the largest amount of people possible. This article talks about the influence of mass media which was of interest to me because I don't think I ever realized how influential it can be and wanted to educate myself. This article matters because because as much as mass media can have significant positive attributes, it can also be influential in negative ways. This article is important to explaining the whole picture of mass media and educating people on why it can be both good and bad. My preliminary impression when I started reading the article was that it was going to enlightening to the broad spectrum of issues that go along with mass media that aren't seen by the naked eye.

Evaluate the article
The article has a concise explanation of what the article is about. It also has an informational, intriguing introductory sentence that clearly describes what the article is about. The lead doesn't include information that isn't in the article, however the lead does mention a few things that could be considered overly described in the lead and should be in the content portion. For example, one of the points in the lead is followed by an example to explain when the lead is supposed to be concise and to the point where the content in the article should be explanatory for those points followed by examples.

The articles content is relevant to the topic and doesn't seem to ramble about things that aren't in relation. The article references information from several sources. There are some sources that have been written within the past 5 years and others vary from 10-15 years, therefore some of the content is up to date and some of it isn't. I think that all the content referenced in the article belongs and was informational and related to the topic. Everything said was concise and explained well for understanding; I don't think anything was missing.

I think the article was neutral because the point mentioned as to why the influence of mass media was positive or negative was explained and or backed up with examples or facts, hence not biased. There were a few points that were briefly mentioned with little to know representation from references that could be seen as biased as well as underrepresented. I don't think anything was over represent but a few points mentioned were underrepresented in few sentences. The article from my perspective attempted to persuade the reader to see more of the negative influence of mass media. Moreover, it referenced several effects of mass media on different audiences.

In regards to sources used, there were many sources used with all different publishing dates. Some were up to dat within the last 5 years and others were used from over 10 years prior which could affect the quality of the article because facts could have changed over time. I looked through some of the sources used and they were legitimate but some weren't thorough which could also affect the facts used in the article.

The article is organized and split into several sections to be concise and clear for points they used to explain their purpose/argument in the article. It was easy to read because of this, simple to find specific information because it was split up well. I didn't find any grammatical errors in the article, but I am personally not great with grammar so I could have missed it.

The article did not use any media to display their arguments and facts. I understand in informational articles there don't need to be several photos but not using any seems like a loss to grab attention and display their points to describe them better.

On the talk page there were discussions of statements made in the article that were irrelevant and some could be interpreted as biased. The article was part of 6 wiki projects. The wikipedia differs from how we've talked about mass media in class by talking in depth of different major points as well as describing the influence of mass media vs just what it is and how it works.

I think this article was well developed. A strong point is that is is organized very well however some weaknesses would be the use of outdated sources and some irrelevant material/bias material.