User:LucasMarcktell/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Political communication

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I have chosen this article because political communication is a very popular topic in the United States. Also, the article can be further elaborated on to better explain political communication.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

The lead section in this article lists some concepts within political communication that are important to the topic but are not mentioned further in the article. The author also does not mention the major sections in the lead section which makes the feel of the article seem a little all over the place. The lead section could be a little more concise because trying to discuss all of the concepts listed the article would be much too long for what is suitable.

Content

The article uses a lot of direct quotes from only a handful of people which could cause the content to be more biased towards a certain point of view. The content throughout the article is up to date but it emphasizes only certain aspects of political communication and leaves out important concepts related to political communication that would give the reader a more complete understanding. The content presented in the article does relate to the topic and explains this relationship well but the information presented is relatively less important than information not presented in the content but mentioned in the lead section.

Tone and Balance

The article uses some language that can be perceived as bias when discussing areas around the world and political communication, in those particular places. There are very few different viewpoints presented throughout the article which contributes to why political communication as a whole is underrepresented. In the section discussing the United States, the Bush Administration is overly emphasized and the fact that the government is "manipulating" citizens is clear bias towards the United States government.

Sources and References

Some of the claims made by the author are not cited by a reliable source or any source for that matter which creates a problem with trusting the information being presented. Some of the sources used are outdated and some information discussed throughout the article needs to be revised and updated to reflect current events. Direct quotes were overused and made up a great amount of the article and these quotes were also not from many different people. For example, in the section after the lead section, there are multiple different quotes from the same people.

Organization and Writing Quality

The article is well written and easy to read but the topic discussed throughout the article didn't fully relate to the topic and what was discussed throughout the lead section. There are some grammatical and spelling errors throughout the article but overall not that many. The article is a little bit unorganized in the sense that it does not relate the concepts discussed back to the main topic but rather explains that concept and moves on to the next one.

Images and Media

The article includes one picture of President George W. Bush giving a speech on immigration in Georgia. This picture is well captioned as it describes who is in it and what is taking place but it is the only picture so the article isn't as aesthetically pleasing as it could be. This picture appears at the top of the page next to the lead section but I think it would make more sense to place it next to the section that is aimed to describe political communication in the United States.

Talk Page Discussion

The conversations that are going on in the talk page regarding this topic are involving editing the social media section in order to keep up to date with new media and technologies. Another good point that was mentioned in the talk page is that the article could benefit from a section discussing how Covid-19 has impacted political communication. This article has been rated fairly high and it is a part of multiple WikiProjects but could definitely benefit from some revisions.

Overall Impressions

The articles strengths are that it is well written, does use some reliable sources, and presents useful information about political communication. The article can improve from adding more to the social media section and some more of the topics discussed in the lead section. Furthermore, there are a lot of direct quotations and I am wondering if the article would benefit from more unique thoughts. This could be contributing to why some parts of the article seem out. of place.