User:Pinkdolphin47/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Campaign advertising

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article as campaign advertising both relates to civic technology and is a topic I have always been interested in. My initial impression of the article was that it was short relative to the weight of the topic it covers.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

The article's introductory sentence is effective as it defines the article's topic of campaign advertising in a simple but informative manner. The lead does describe each of the article's major sections, however, it goes into excessive detail when discussing differences in campaign advertising laws across countries. These differences should have been summarized more concisely and delved into in the body of the article instead. The lead does not include information that is not present in the article.

Content

The article's content is relevant to the topic, although it lacks detail about different campaign advertising strategies. The content is largely up-to-date, but the addition of more modern examples of campaign advertising campaigns and new regulations would provide a more relevant discussion of the topic. However, none of the article's content is distracting and it is all relevant.

Tone and Balance

The writing of the article has a neutral tone and the author does not try to persuade the reader to believe in any specific position on campaign advertising. However, there is a more substantial focus on campaign advertising examples and regulations in Western countries, with a particular focus on the United States. Countries from other regions receive little to no focus in comparison. Thus, a Eurocentric, American viewpoint is overrepresented in the article while the perspectives of countries in Asia, Africa, and South America are underrepresented. The article references studies at different points and accurately attributes information to these studies rather than presenting these findings as correct or incorrect. It does not acknowledge any bias present within the studies it references. Additionally, the article does not acknowledge whether the studies included are majority or minority viewpoints.

Sources and References

Not all facts in the article are backed up by reliable secondary sources. Rather, there are tags of "citation needed" following several pieces of information presented in the article. The sources are for the most part thorough as they represent a variety of source types and cover a range of subtopics related to campaign advertising, including regulations, case analyses, and current events. However, several sources are from several years ago, especially in the early 2010s. This raises concerns that the article does not adequately cover the modern intricacies of campaign advertising and recent developments in the fields that have occurred since the 2010s as digital media and advertising has been continually evolving. The sources, similar to the article's content, could be more diverse as they tend to come from Western, particularly American, authors and do not equally represent the voices of historically marginalized or international authors. Additionally, many of the sources are news articles and the use of peer-reviewed articles and studies could improve the accuracy of these sources. The links in the sources section do work and the sources that are linked support the claims in the article they are attached to.

Organization and Writing Quality

The article is well-written, as it uses a neutral tone and clear language that makes it easy to follow. There are no grammatical or spelling errors. The article is well-organized, as it is separated into the subtopics of history, regulation, and effects with additional subsections for specific countries. However, there could be more explanation as to the differences between the "Regulation" section and "Regulation of Political Advertising" section.

Images and Media

There are images at the beginning of the article that enhance the writing, but they are not evenly included throughout the rest of the article, especially for countries outside of the United States. The captions for the images are detailed and adequately explain what each image shows. The images seem to adhere to Wikipedia copyright violations and are displayed in a visually appealing manner.

Talk Page Discussion

There are minimal conversations going on in the article's talk page, with most of them discussing the modification of external links and archives. There is also a short conversation about an error in the way the author discusses election results. The article is rated C-class and is part of the WikiProjects of Elections and Referendums, Marketing and Advertising, and Politics.

Overall Impressions

The article's overall status is that it needs improvement in fully covering the details of campaign advertising and representing a wide range of viewpoints and countries. Its strengths are its formal and neutral writing style as well as the detail with which it discusses American campaign advertising. However, it could be improved by applying the same level of detail to discuss campaign advertising in other countries. It is underdeveloped as there are subtopics of campaign advertising that it either does not cover or glosses over, including advertising techniques and controversies about the subject.

We have not yet discussed the topic of the article in class, but the way Wikipedia discusses the article focuses more on campaign advertising regulations rather than advertising techniques as I have learned in previous years in school.