User:Ashley13530/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Health communication

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
Health communication is an important topic of discussion the general public should have knowledge of. As someone who is in the field of science, the topic of health, in general, is a topic that needs to be communicated in the most proper and safest way. I believe health communication matters because it falls under the topic of medical ethics in the way that health professionals go about communicating important information to their patients. I have taken medical ethics classes so I am aware of what health communication encompasses and was not at all surprised by the information.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

Health communication is concerned with health and healthcare by using communication strategies to properly convey messages of medical science to the general public with their best interests of health in mind. Due to there being a wide range of cultures, health communication encourages learning from diversity to provide better care for patients through both nonverbal and verbal communication. Plenty of research and training is performed to achieve successful communication, especially when the information is wished to be delivered to a specific audience. This information can be spread by campaigns, which have been historically effective, as well as through entertainment media due to advancements in technology. While health communication can be applied to extreme situations, such as natural disasters, it can also be challenged due to the literacy-communication gap and mass media.

Content

The content in the article is relevant to the topic and appears to be up-to-date. While there are a few references that are from the 20th century, the majority of them are from the 21st century which prove to maintain an updated status. All of the content fits into the article and there is no lack of information. The article does mention diversity a few times which implies that historically underrepresented populations are included in the discussion; however, there is no mention of equity gaps.

Tone and Balance

The article lacks a neutral point of view due to an underlying tone of an urge for importance on the content. Claims for bias are not represented in this article which results in no overrepresentation or underrepresentation and minority viewpoints are mentioned. The tone of importance however does try to persuade the reader to agree with the content provided.

Sources and References

Reliable secondary sources are provided with the factual content mentioned in this article and the sources in turn reflect the literature on health communications. As mentioned before, a few sources are from the 20th century but only for historical purposes. The majority of the sources are from the 21st century which can be considered recent and are written by a diverse group of authors and corporations. Unaware if these authors are historically marginalized. An appropriate amount of sources are peer-reviewed articles with a little number of random websites and the links are functional. However, the addition of more references can benefit this article.

Organization and writing quality

The article is easy to read and does not cause confusion. However, it does read similar to a term paper which may be why it is easy for me to read. The article does not have any grammatical or spelling errors from what I saw. The organization of the article is well-done by dividing into sections. There are sections that distinguish different types of information regarding human communication that also represent the main points as well.

Images and Media

The article lacks images; therefore, there is no enhancement of understanding. The article only contains one image that is unnecessary; however, it is well-captioned and follows the copyright regulations for Wikipedia. The image is off to the side and does not interfere with the text. It is associated with the proper section but, as stated before, does not enhance understanding. The caption could be incorporated into the section text without the use of an image.

Talk page discussion

There are only two comments on the article's talk page where one asks about how mental health affects communication and the other mentions the lack of information on health communication within multilingual countries. The article is involved in WikiProject Media and WikiProject Medicine and is rated as a Start-Class on both. The way this topic is discussed is not much different from the way we talk about it in class. This article included examples of verbal and nonverbal communication but lacked specifics beyond that, such as emotions.

Overall Impressions

The overall status of the article according to Wikipedia is Start-Class even though I personally thought it read quite well. A strength of this article is that it flows nicely and has quite a bit of information that can be extended. The article needs to have more of a neutral tone and could benefit from having more images that are relative to the content. Since the article is about health communication, there could be more information about the types of communication that occurred during the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 due to the pandemic being a recent event. This can be done by adding more references that are relevant to this topic and the health communications topic as a whole. The article reads similar to a term paper; therefore, there is some editing to be done in terms of the flow. The article is most definitely underdeveloped but with the proper adjustments, it can be well-developed soon.