Make Sense News Australia: 5 December-11 December 2020
Contents
How We Choose
We’ve selected the top most engaging news articles on Twitter from Australian news media. The selection criteria are based on logical fallacies statistics found in the retweets and comments.
Critical Concentration
“Labor’s Kristina Keneally says the rise of right-wing extremism needs to be examined through a parliamentary inquiry to evaluate Australia’s readiness to confronting the challenge…”
The response contains approximately 35% of comments that look a lot like fallacious reasoning of any type our detector can recognise. Spread between reasoning type groups:
People understand the danger of both left (marxism, green and other socialists) and right (religious, nazi and racism) extremism. Some reminding not to forget left extremism, some reminging of other directions to bring more control over.
Labor's Kristina Keneally says the rise of right-wing extremism needs to be examined through a parliamentary inquiry to evaluate Australia's readiness to confronting the challenge. https://t.co/pdEWtMIjbm
— SBS News (@SBSNews) December 7, 2020
Examples of logical fallacies from responses:
Left wingers are more harmful to Australians prosperity
But it’s left wing extremists who are looting murdering and burning buildings down. When’s the parliamentary into that starting
Triggering News
Inspiring Ad Hominem and Name Calling.
In this reference to the person, name-calling, and identity politics trigger group during last week, the most prominent tweet was
“Vice President-elect Kamala Harris has revealed the transition team will be all female and mostly African American…”
The response contains approximately 39% of comments that look a lot like Ad Hominem Attacks. The spread controversial arguments between logical fallacy groups:
Looks like reverse discrimination based on race and gender principle. Hard to beleive VP Harris was trolling the Americans intentionally. From the comments:
… this is how to demonstrate that one’s skin color is deemed more important than education and qualifications within the context of measuring and evaluating one’s competence for a given employment position. How shameful!! Dr. King is spinning in his grave.
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris has revealed the transition team will be all female and mostly African American.https://t.co/S8uoeKYsyJ
— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) December 3, 2020
Examples of Argumentum ad Hominem and Argumentum ad Personam we detect from the comments. It might be not 100% correct, but overall, when it’s not about the topic but shifting attention to person, it mostly is.
She’s an actual racist and sexist.
This is 100 the left’s idea of equality, just reverse the racism
Food for Thoughts
In this smart argument category - where comments contain a lot of reasoning that looks really like Appeal to Ignorance, Reduction to Absurdity, Conspiracy Theory, False Dichotomy Fallacy, Fallacy of Composition or Fallacy of Division.
Last week, the most worth reading tweet in this group was
“What conspiracy theorists have in common with social media influencers…”
The response contains approximately 13% of comments that look a lot like logical fallacies of the types listed above. The distribution between this and other groups of reasoning types:
Sociologist spent a lot of time researching online behaviour related to health issues and compared influencers and conspiracy theorists.
What conspiracy theorists have in common with social media influencers https://t.co/I8fS1Gpkx8
— ABC News (@abcnews) December 8, 2020
The example of Conspiracy Theory fallacy/reference from the comments:
You mean like the conspiracy theory that has Murdoch orchestrating everything in the world as some type of omnipotent puppetmaster?
Emotional Trigger
Inspiring in comments something that looks really like Appeal to Emotion.
In this Emotional Appeal category last week, the most worth reading tweet was
“A drug-addict mum who poured scalding water over her 19-month-old daughter and left her to die in agonising pain, has been found guilty of murder…”
The response contains approximately 20% of comments that look a lot like emotional appeals. To compare with other groups:
Very emotional piece of news.
A drug-addict mum who poured scalding water over her 19-month-old daughter and left her to die in agonising pain, has been found guilty of murder.https://t.co/DhGkIXTht1
— news.com.au (@newscomauHQ) December 9, 2020
Appeal to Emotion examples:
I hope the punishment fits the crime as some how I cannot see this happening. This poor baby, just disgusting
How disgusting to be blessed with a healthy baby only to murder her in such a way, my heart breaks. This woman deserves a really hard long painful process to recovery. One day she will realise what she’s lost and only then will she be punished. For Life.
Team and Status Quo
Inspiring readers for some arguments that look like contain these logical fallacies
In this class last week, the most prominent piece of news was
“Victorian Shadow Police Minister @SouthwickMP says there’s got to be a lot of work that will need to be done to restore confidence back in Victoria Police going forward…”
The response contains approximately 16% of comments that look a lot like logical fallacies of the kinds above. The reasoning types composition:
Victorian Shadow Police Minister said -
We need a reset in terms of particularly around community policing and bringing back that cooperative nature in dealing with the community at very much the frontline level
There was no details what actions they were going to take to achieve this. See in previous reviews one of the hottest topics was how police addressed anti-lockdown protest in Melbourne. That comment sums it up:
Embarrassment to our nation. Planting under cover police in rallies to interrupt peaceful protests, forceful, obnoxious and aggressive behaviour and generally overstepping their duties. How to you recover from that?
Victorian Shadow Police Minister @SouthwickMP says there's got to be a lot of work that will need to be done to restore confidence back in Victoria Police going forward.https://t.co/S79GS2cmK4
— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) December 9, 2020
Hasty Generalization, Ad-Hominem and plain insult example from comments:
Victoria Police are the most corrupt organisation in Australia.
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