User:Ashtonbell/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Political communication

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

Personally, I believe that communication referring to politics in particular, have become an extremely hot topic/touchy subject for some in the current environment. Like we touched on today in class, politics are often an area of disagreement/conflict and I enjoy the science behind the communication in politics. Maybe I'll pursue a career there, who knows.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

Lead Section

I think the lead section of this article started off strong, but should have been cut down to be more concise. The author(s) lead with a strong first sentence, giving the reader an extremely quick summary on the topic of political communication as a whole, and creating a strong indicator if the reader is in the right place for what he/she may be looking for in his/her research. I think the author(s) could have kept the lead a little bit more concise and kept the "machine learning, natural language processing, and network analysis" in a different section.

Content

The content of this article is informative, and relevant to the topic at hand, but is lackluster in certain, specific areas where more sourcing and references should be added. There are entire multi-paragraph sections without a reference to a source. (such as the "Persuasive discursive" bullet point under the "Contemporary examples of strategic political communication" section) Large gaps like this without references makes me (the reader) question the supposed un-biased view that wikipedia offers.

Tone and Balance

The article seems to carry a balanced perspective, with no obvious biases towards one viewpoint or another. Although, as previously stated, some sections contain large areas with little to no referencing, which forces the reader to rely on the credibility of the author. One topic my partner brought up was: There is a bias towards how Political Communication Pertains to the Western World. There is little to no information about the rest of the world, and I would like to see some additional research on this. But, I can understand why this may happen, when the author(s) mainly arise from one country, and are writing with an underlying nationalistic viewpoint, without intentionally dis-regarding other countries. There could be more writing on the topic as it pertains to other countries.

Sources and Ref's

The sourcing and referencing in this article seems to be correct, but not of high quality. There is always a hyperlink to a correct source when information in the article is presented to the reader. So, the use of sourcing is generally correct, but could be improved. It could be improved by updating some sources, or reevaluating some references. Most sources were not particularly recent, most being from more than five years ago. Overall, the use of sources is correct. A wide array of authors and high quality sources are used to support the topics in the article.

Organization+Writing Quality

The Article is well enough written to easily understand and discuss, but there are some errors, and other areas where formatting could be improved. Some mistakes such as a missing parentheses or incorrectly bolded words. Grammatically, this article stands up to the test of any modest college reviewer. Overall, the article is well written, but could use an updated formatting for clarity.

Images+Media

There is a limited use of images and/or media throughout this article. As previously stated, there seems to be a slight bias towards the political communication in the western world. This bias is compounded by the singular picture of George. W. Bush giving a speech. The use of the photo is relevant to the topic, and is correctly cited following applicable copyright rules and regulations. The image is used in an appealing, non intrusive way that adds to the narrative of the article. The article could see improvement in this area by including more images or media of a larger 'group' of political communicators, from around the world.

Talk Page Discussion

The talk page of this article is underwhelming, as this must be a low traffic article. Any discussion of real changes happened several years ago ( 'discussion ' is a strong word for it, even) and recently, the only action in the talk page article is by student contributors like ourselves. Overall, there does not seem to be a good amount of community cooperation when it comes to polishing this article, considering the article is crucial to many Wiki Projects for politics, media, and telecommunications.

Overall Impression

Overall, the article displayed a large amount of correct, relevant, and tasteful information. The article could improved by a greater Geo-centric view of political communication. This would make the article relevant to more than just a few countries in the west. The article is well written and provides a lot of useful information to the reader in a high quality, easy to access way.