User:GoBears243/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
I chose the evaluate the article on Instagram.

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
To me, Instagram felt like it was a part of the civic technology realm (from the definition mentioned in class) since it is used to improve civic outcomes in more ways than one, be it through either organizing movements and raise awareness for underlying problems, disasters, increasing transparency between government and people, spread information about missing person whereabouts, etc. However, there are many caveats to Instagram's role in civic technology, since through many social media platforms misinformation and disinformation regarding serious matters can spread quickly, scandals regarding the government and other important issues can be revealed causing distrust between people and government, and overall mental health can decline as a result of Instagram, or social media in general.

Evaluate the article
In regards to the lead section, the introductory sentence was concise and clear, but a reader who did not know much about Instagram would not be able to necessarily decipher that Instagram was a social media application similar to Facebook or Twitter. However, the rest of the introductory paragraph, which mentioned the popular aspects of Instagram such as the most liked picture, the most followed people, etc. were mentioned, it becomes evident to the user the contents of Instagram. There was a table of contents, like all Wikipedia articles, but the lead did not include a description of the major sections of the article. A decent portion of the article focused on Facebook's acquisition of Instagram, various critiques on censorship policies, data scandals, etc. that were not mentioned in the lead section. However, the lead section succeeded in staying on focus and did not mention any extraneous information that was not mentioned in the article; the article was also concise and easy to read.

The article's content was relevant and up to date, and I was reading I found no gaps in information, and for the majority of the article, the article was easy to follow. However, at some points I felt like the Wikipedia article could expand on some serious matters. There was a great deal of information on the features of Instagram and critiques of Instagram's updates, but there was brief descriptions in the culture section of the article, which only mentioned Ellie Goulding's new song, and instead the article could expand more on Instagram's overall culture and it's role in the media and even in spreading awareness about important movements that have become more prominent in the last year. During the mental health section, the article discussed a study conducted in 2017, and it is evident that more had to be said about the matter. Moreover, during the sexual harassment section, only one prominent incident from 2016 was mentioned, and sexual harassment is still large problem in Instagram and social media in general and during the fact-checking section I felt like there could have been more on presidential elections and the role Instagram played. In these respective sections, there were not that many links either that contained more information and recent information and research. However, the rest of the article that mentioned the development of Instagram, features of Instagram, and management of Instagram had suffice information.

Instagram itself is not a product that can be necessarily debated on, and the article was solely informational. There was not any bias present throughout the article and a neutral tone was used throughout the article. When it came to controversial sections, the article presented both sides of the argument, normally the two differing perspectives being Instagram's executives and external media. Moreover, all of the citations or links I clicked on worked, and there was no issue with the credibility of the sources used.

In the talk section of the Instagram Wikipedia article, there was some irrelevant information, but most of the discussion was on focus. There were some discussion regarding grammatical errors or information that needed to be added that were resolved through the reply feature, and there was some mention of how Instagram censoring content in the Middle East and that was also resolved. In addition, the article was also of interest to many WikiProjects. Moreover, although we have not talked about Instagram specifically in class, we talked a bit in the first lecture how it was interesting how Facebook, which owns Instagram, played a key part in the election and was a medium for spreading information or disinformation and misinformation, and this idea was mentioned a bit in the article.