{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,8]],"date-time":"2026-05-08T22:47:27Z","timestamp":1778280447227,"version":"3.51.4"},"reference-count":28,"publisher":"SAGE Publications","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2021,12,7]],"date-time":"2021-12-07T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1638835200000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/page\/policies\/text-and-data-mining-license"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100004281","name":"Narodowe Centrum Nauki","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["2019\/35\/B\/HS6\/01056"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2019\/35\/B\/HS6\/01056"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100004281","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["journals.sagepub.com"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["New Media &amp; Society"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2024,1]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>As Godwin\u2019s Law states, \u201cas a discussion on the Internet grows longer, the likelihood of a person being compared to Hitler, or another Nazi reference, increases.\u201d However, even though the theoretical probability of an infinitely long conversation including any term should approach 1.0, in practice, conversations cannot be infinite in length, and this long-accepted axiom is impossible to observe. By analyzing 199 million Reddit posts, we note that, after a certain point, the probability of observing the terms \u201cNazi\u201d or \u201cHitler\u201d actually decreases significantly with conversation length. In addition, a corollary of Godwin\u2019s Law holds that \u201cthe invocation of Godwin\u2019s Law is usually done by an individual that is losing the argument,\u201d and, thus, that comparisons to Nazis are a signal of a discussion\u2019s end. In other words, comparing one\u2019s interlocutor to Hitler is supposed to be a conversation-killer. While it is difficult to determine whether a discussion on a given topic ended or not in a large dataset, we observe a marked increase in conversation length when the words \u201cHitler\u201d or \u201cNazi\u201d are newly interjected. Given that both of these observations challenge widely accepted and intuitive truisms, other words were run through the same set of tests. Within the context of the initial question, these results suggest that it is not inevitable that conversations eventually disintegrate into reductio ad Hitlerum, and that such comparisons are not conversation-killers. The results moreover suggest that we may underestimate, in the popular imagination, how much conversations may actually become narrower and therefore may tend to have a more impoverished or limited vocabulary as they stretch on. All of these observations provoke questions for further research.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1177\/14614448211062070","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,12,8]],"date-time":"2021-12-08T01:32:52Z","timestamp":1638927172000},"page":"389-404","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/sage-journals-update-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":7,"title":["Does Godwin\u2019s law (rule of Nazi analogies) apply in observable reality? An empirical study of selected words in 199 million Reddit posts"],"prefix":"10.1177","volume":"26","author":[{"given":"Gabriele","family":"Fariello","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Harvard University, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3745-7931","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Dariusz","family":"Jemielniak","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Kozminski University, Poland"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Adam","family":"Sulkowski","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Babson College, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"179","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,12,7]]},"reference":[{"key":"bibr1-14614448211062070","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/ic-ETITE47903.2020.386"},{"key":"bibr2-14614448211062070","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1609\/icwsm.v14i1.7347"},{"key":"bibr3-14614448211062070","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1177\/0957926511431036"},{"key":"bibr4-14614448211062070","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/2817946.2817959"},{"key":"bibr5-14614448211062070","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ipm.2019.04.002"},{"key":"bibr6-14614448211062070","unstructured":"Fuchs C (2011) Foundations of Critical Media and Information Studies. Available at: https:\/\/books.google.ca\/books?hl=en&lr=&id=K2Zo8wAymHAC&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&ots=z62YpQSjOJ&sig=3F2fegW7C3rSOg1Hs2MGn2xZNaM"},{"key":"bibr7-14614448211062070","unstructured":"Gagnon T (2013) The disinhibition of Reddit users. Available at: https:\/\/writingandrhetoric.cah.ucf.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/17\/2019\/10\/KWS2_Gagnon.pdf"},{"key":"bibr8-14614448211062070","unstructured":"Godwin M (1994) Meme, counter-meme. Wired, October 1. Available at: https:\/\/www.wired.com\/1994\/10\/godwin-if-2\/"},{"key":"bibr9-14614448211062070","unstructured":"Godwin M (1995) Godwin\u2019s law (EFF mailing list). Available at: https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20120829094739\/http:\/\/w2.eff.org\/Net_culture\/Folklore\/Humor\/godwins.law"},{"key":"bibr10-14614448211062070","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/D16-1189"},{"key":"bibr11-14614448211062070","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1080\/08865655.2019.1571935"},{"key":"bibr12-14614448211062070","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.11126\/stanford\/9780804789448.001.0001"},{"key":"bibr13-14614448211062070","unstructured":"Johnson BS (2010) \u201cJust like Hitler\u201d: comparisons to Nazism in American culture. PhD Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA. Available at: https:\/\/scholarworks.umass.edu\/open_access_dissertations\/233\/"},{"key":"bibr14-14614448211062070","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1038\/s41467-019-09311-w"},{"key":"bibr15-14614448211062070","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1093\/comnet\/cny010"},{"key":"bibr16-14614448211062070","first-page":"183","volume-title":"Dynamics on and of Complex Networks","author":"Medvedev AN","year":"2017"},{"key":"bibr17-14614448211062070","unstructured":"Merritt E (2012) An analysis of the discourse of internet trolling: a case study of Reddit.Com. Available at: https:\/\/ida.mtholyoke.edu\/xmlui\/handle\/10166\/1058"},{"key":"bibr18-14614448211062070","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.4324\/9781315634968"},{"key":"bibr19-14614448211062070","unstructured":"Ohlheiser A (2017) The creator of Godwin\u2019s law explains why some Nazi comparisons don\u2019t break his famous internet rule. The Washington Post, August 14. Available at: https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/the-intersect\/wp\/2017\/08\/14\/the-creator-of-godwins-law-explains-why-some-nazi-comparisons-dont-break-his-famous-internet-rule\/"},{"key":"bibr20-14614448211062070","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.7551\/mitpress\/10288.001.0001"},{"key":"bibr21-14614448211062070","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.7551\/mitpress\/10116.001.0001"},{"key":"bibr22-14614448211062070","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1080\/01972243.2017.1391911"},{"key":"bibr23-14614448211062070","unstructured":"Shelton M, Lo K, Nardi B (2015) Online media forums as separate social lives: a qualitative study of disclosure within and beyond Reddit. In: iConference 2015 proceedings. 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