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:

Logical Fallacies Composition

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.

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:

Logical Fallacies Composition

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.

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:

Logical Fallacies Composition

Sociologist spent a lot of time researching online behaviour related to health issues and compared influencers and conspiracy theorists.

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:

Logical Fallacies Composition

Very emotional piece of news.

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:

Logical Fallacies 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?

Hasty Generalization, Ad-Hominem and plain insult example from comments:

Victoria Police are the most corrupt organisation in Australia.

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Other top news: All News Articles reviews with Logical Fallacies examples from comments.