What initially led me to start work on this project was the observation that the examples of fallacies and questionable argument tactics studied in textbooks of informal logic often featured examples of advertisements and political arguments of the kind that have to do with elections or with public policies. Many of them are media arguments from sources such as political speeches, commercial ads, or Internet blogs. Such arguments are especially interesting when it is evident that they were used – for example, in ads – as rhetorically effective techniques to persuade a mass audience. Formerly (and often still), such arguments tended to be classified in logic as fallacious. But more and more they are now seen as fallible (but slippery) heuristics useful to reach a tentative conclusion under conditions of uncertainty, but subject to critical questioning. The theory put forward in this book strikes a judicious balance between analyzing them as fallible but basically reasonable arguments in some cases, and criticizing them as fallacious arguments used as tactics to unfairly get the best of an opponent or deceive a mass audience in other cases.

More specifically, the kinds of arguments considered throughout the book are ones often used in various communication media, including written texts, television, and the Internet, to attempt to persuade an audience to do something or accept something as true.