User:BradenHeath/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Social media and identity

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I have chosen to evaluate the social media and identity Wikipedia article because it is vaguely associated with communication, and is something I am also interested in. Evaluating this article will interesting because social media and identity is a concept that is so prevalent to my age group in particular, as it seems to be such an important part of so many high school and college students. Having the ability to analyze this article will be a good opportunity to relate something like this which is fairly new to our world, to something so important and immortal like communication.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

To start with the evaluation of the social media and identity article, the lead section has plenty of room for improvement. The introductory sentence does not give a general statement of what the article is about, but rather explains that the relationship between social media and identity have positive and negative factors. While the lead section gives some background to the topic, it focuses on three main focus points of this topic, studied by psychology and communication professors, which would be a good setup for certain parts of this article. A major issue is that there is no focus on these three main points, even though these three things are the main idea of the second sentence of the entire article. While parts of these ideas present themselves later in indirect ways, there is no focus on them, leading me to question why they are such a prominent part of the lead section. Another issue with the lead section is that it does not give an overview of all the sections which will be talked about throughout this article. The very last sentence brings up the first main section in the article, trying to act as a transitioning piece, but it appears to be shoved in there with little care as to how it cuts off the flow from the preceding few sentences of the lead section. By taking out certain content which is not focused on throughout the article, and replacing it with the main points and overviews of the main sections, the lead section would flow much better, and give a better representation as to what this article is about. One of the few positive takeaways from the lead section is that it is concise, however, the conciseness stems from not being well organizing and a feeling of lostness as to what to include in this introductory paragraph.

Content

Similarly to the lead section of this article, there are some areas in the content that were covered well, along with others areas that are lacking. Much of the article's content is relevant to the topic, in the sense that most things said relate back to social media and identity in some way. One thing that I was a bit confused about was the section on media literacy. I feel like including an entire section (granted it was short) about media literacy was unnecessary in the scope of this article as it has no direct relation to social media and identity. This is a topic that should have been explained in one or two sentences when it was brought up in a different section, but it is thrown in right in the middle of all the other content making it feel very out of place and strangely located. The article is mostly up to date as it includes common social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter in certain sections. I do feel like, however, that there is a great opportunity to add in some content about Tik Tok, which is a newer app, but I feel like it could benefit this topic very well in the section about body image. This could be an update to show that things are up to date with the most relevant apps and other things involved in how people view others on social media platforms. I think the largest area of concern and struggle in this article is the overall lack of different perspectives and key points about this topic as a whole. The bulk of this article is focused on young adults and influences on body image. While these are both key and important sections of this topic, there are various others that should be included, but simply aren't. Including content on some of the things mentioned in the lead section such as individual behavior, psychological impact, and social patterns could be very useful for this article as far as content goes. Also, including content on identity itself and how all demographics of people view identity in similar or contrary ways could be another good section of this article. I think there are certainly gaps in content itself, but does not necessarily have to do with certain groups of people being ousted. Overall, there are many more key elements which should be included in this topic that aren't even mentioned. While there is sufficient enough information of young adults and body image, there are a multitude of other things that go into the topic of social media and identity that aren't even mentioned, doing this article a massive disservice.

Tone and Balance

Moving onto the next element of this evaluation, the tone of this article is pretty neutral, and it is balanced as well. The article does a good job at sharing all perspectives of social media, as it mentions some positive and negative aspects of social media. There is no direct statements explaining why social media is either good or bad, but instead offers differing viewpoints of how social media has positive and negative connotations attached to it. For instance, the article shares how social media is unique from other types of media because of the increased engagement that each user can have with certain platforms. It also shares how there are various resulting effects that involvement in social media may have, including the increased awareness of body image. While the majority of the article is written in a neutral sense, I cannot help but feel like this article is slightly swayed in the perspective of the authors. The largest section of this article focuses on body image, and shares how some negative things come out of the relation between social media and body image. Although this section is still written in a neutral aspect, it still has the overarching tone that this is a negative area of concern. I think including these feelings in this section would be very understandable if there was some focus in other parts of the article talking about other relations between social media and identity instead of focusing on the negative effects on body image. I think there are definitely some viewpoints that are underrepresented, which somewhat connects with the lack of content in some areas. There needs to be more focus on the actual title of the article, being "social media and identity", but instead, this article feels much more like social media's impact on young adults and their self image. The identity piece is key, as so much more goes into one's identity than just body image. This article covers that one aspect of identity fairly well, but it severely lacks in the balance of good and bad that comes with social media into one's identity.

Sources and References

For the most part in this article, facts are typically backed up by quality sources which take a deep dive into different aspects of this topic. There are a couple instances where the article states something that should have a citation, even though this is not a common mistake. An example of one instance where this occurs is when the article talks about certain methods that psychologists use in order to connect certain information from a person's social media interactions to their own being. This is a statement that should probably be backed up by a trusted source, as it gives certain insights about a professional and how they are able to make a contribution in this topic. Stating something like this without any evidence makes the information less trusted, as it is something that most people probably either didn't know, or never heard about, and the article is presenting it as a fact. Other areas do not necessarily need a source to back a statement up if it is common knowledge, but in this instance, this statement is definitely not common knowledge. There are only a couple errors like this, and for the most part all statements with facts are backed up by sources. After looking into a plethora of sources given in this article, I have seen that these sources are very good ones, and relate to this topic almost entirely. The sources are either about social media and identity directly, or include more specific information about different areas within the article itself. The sources are mostly all peer reviewed and consist entirely of scholarly sources, which is a positive thing to see since it validates facts and talking points in this article so much more. In addition to this, there are a variety of different sources from different locations, resulting in multiple perspectives about the same topics. The sources are up to date, as many of them come from 2017 to 2019, and the information in those sources have stayed consistent with what we know today. For the information given in the article, I think there are a good number of sources and the quality of them is good as well, meaning there are not many additional sources I came across that would benefit this article anymore. The one thing I will say for the future of this article, is that when more content is included about different aspects of social media and identity, it will allow more a larger variety of sources to be used, and there will be many more than what are there right now. For the content that is there, however, the sources do a good job validating facts and covering all areas of information that are covered.

Organization and Writing Quality

The article is well-written and easy to follow from point to point, for the most part. As I mentioned earlier, the lead section lacks in organization as it seems random bits and pieces were thrown into this section while trying to give a brief overview of what the article is about. Other than that section, however, the flow and organization within each paragraph is good. One section in particular which I think does an adequate job at this is the last section talking about body image. The thoughts in this section are concise and easy to follow along through the section. The other thing I like about this section is that it is split into five different paragraphs, each focusing on a slightly different area under this subheading in the article. This visual split of information makes the article feel much more organized, and presents the thoughts of the authors in a much clearer fashion. While the organization within the individual paragraphs are good, I think the organization of the sections in the article as a whole needs improvement. There are only four main sections within this article, and the middle two sections don't make sense to me for a few different reasons. As I talked about before, these sections seem like they should be included in a broader, more important section that is more directly correlated to the main topic of this article. Besides the content of these sections, they are thrown into the article at very random spots, both being placed right in between two main sections of this article. These sections do not add much to the main topics presented, and their inclusion gives a major sense of lack of organization as a whole. While the organization of the article is inadequate, it is free of grammatical errors and simple spelling mistakes. Through my analysis so far, the grammar and spelling is the most impressive thing up to this point.

Images and Media

The images and media portion of this article is severely lacking, as only one image is included. The image presented is located at the very beginning right next to the lead section, and has very little to do with any actual content. It is simple a graphic showing different social media platforms presented on a computer keyboard, adding nothing of real value to the article. It is better to have a graphic like this, rather than nothing at all like the rest of the article. The picture has a caption explaining the picture in a very elementary sense, but gives no value to the article. The picture is good to have for a visual sense, as the rest of the article is very bland, however, I think the location of the photo can be moved around to give it a better look in the article.

Talk Page Discussion

There are no conversations currently, and there have not been any conversations on this talk page about this article. This article is not currently a part of any WikiProjects, however, it is "of interest" for three different WikiProjects. The article also does not have a rating. I think the reason for the lack of talk page discussion components is because of the small size of the article, and also the specificity and uniqueness of this article topic. This article is obviously very raw, and with more time and effort into this page, I believe the talk page elements would follow.

Overall Impressions

As I have said throughout the majority of these past evaluation components, this article is in need of lots of work and restructuring. I think some of what is included in this article is good and benefits the main ideas, however, there is so much information not included, and so little focus on the overall content and organization. I think this would be a mixture of an underdeveloped and poorly developed article because of the lack of content in so many areas, as well as the poor choice of content inclusion in various parts of this article. I think there are some good things to take out of this such as the two main sections, but to fulfill what this article has the potential of being, there is lots of work and further research which needs to be done to make this an adequate article for Wikipedia.