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

“‘I’m in the mood to lose my job’: CCTV shows police officer grabbing Aboriginal teen, threatening others in NT watch house…”

The response contains approximately 45% of comments that look a lot like fallacious reasoning of any type our detector can recognise. Spread between reasoning type groups:

Logical Fallacies Composition

Police oficer applied force to contain misbehaviour. Ediitor puts words ’teen’ and ‘Aboriginal’ into Tweet head line. That’s wakeb up fight betweent left and centre audience with

Police has no right to apply any force, it’s a disgrace

and

All low lives should be addressed equally but media only shows footages when Indigenous are the victims.

Example of Appeal to Spite from responses:

Thise kids are criminals. They are wastes of space. They are pieces of shit. The police have to put up with idiots like these day in day out. Good work officers.

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

“…Refugees and asylum seekers who have been detained for more than a year at a hotel in Melbourne’s north will be moved to another location by the Australian Border Force…”

The response contains approximately 37% of comments that look a lot like Ad Hominem Attacks. The spread controversial arguments between logical fallacy groups:

Logical Fallacies Composition

Refugees migrants trying to get proper status and it took longer then expected, and covid lockdown exacebrated this.

Examples of Argumentum ad Hominem and Argumentum ad Personam from the comments

A lot of really crappy excuses for people will be happy with this. Pathetic.

This is insult with attemt of ad-hominem attack, but there are more and more replies like this to very legit posts.

The trolls certainly have crept out from under their rocks on this thread. Stupid idiot trolls.

Food for Thoughts

In this smart argument category - where comments contain a lot of reasoning that looks really like Appeal to Ignorance, Reduction to Absurd, Conspiracy Theory, False Dichotomy Fallacy, Fallacy of Composition or Fallacy of Division.

Last week, the most worth reading tweet in this group was

“Australia’s newest $1.2b coal-fired power station is now worthless as solar reigns supreme…”

The response contains approximately 9% 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

A company built new coal-fueled power station, which came out as a bad investment. New energy sources including wind nucliar and solar are the competitors. Also, probably, because of carbon emission quotas the costs of running the coal might be prohibitive. People feel responsibility for the environment and for the Australian economy, where the coal and other non-renewable resourcesplay big part.

A couple examples of Hasty Generalization and non-sequiturs?:

That’s just how fiscally irresponsible the right-wingers are!

Wow and only everyone saw that coming

And Conspiracy Theories example:

The people here that think coal is great have been watching too much Murdoch media. Literally brainwashed beyond the point of knowing what’s good and what’s not. Very concerning.

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 ‘partisan’ political lesson where children’s abusive messages and artworks against US president Donald Trump were put on display at a Sydney inner-city primary school has sparked criticism by upset parents and Upper House MP Mark Latham…”

The response contains approximately 16% of comments that look a lot like emotional appeals. To compare with other groups:

Logical Fallacies Composition

People feel emotional bout their kids and what those were taught at school.

Examples of Appeal to Emotion:

Allowing children to become partisan is just one more way bullying will rear it’s ugly head in school. You want to create REAL evil? Really damaged, sick, sociopathic children? Easy, create more bullies that will emotionally damage them for the future. This “wall” is an example

How sick are these people, forcing their bitter, hateful views on small children? No wonder there’s so much division and hate in the world.

Team and Status Quo

Inspiring readers for some arguments that look like contain these logical fallacies Appeal to Popularity, Hasty Generalization, Appeal to Tradition, Appeal to Authority or Slippery Slope. In this class last week, the most prominent piece of news was

“Many Victorians are still wandering around all covered up — but the time to ditch face masks has well and truly arrived…”

The response contains approximately 11% of comments that we would associate with this group. The reasoning types composition:

Logical Fallacies Composition

After numbers of COVID19 cases had dropped there are several proposals about abolishing the requirement of wearing the masks.

Hasty generalizations/anecdotal evidence exampl:

Really?? I feel more comfortable wearing a mask when in close proximity to strangers - not only for covid but any other airborne disease/virus. Happy to continue wearing it.

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