240 Years of Public Discourse on Moral Courage in The London Times

Rising right-wing influences and hate crime threaten the livelihoods of significant segments of multicultural societies. Moral courage and its variations (e.g., in German Zivilcourage) can contribute to stopping such developments and keep society peaceful and cohesive. Current studies have focused on the understanding and, for example, determinants of these concepts in today’s societies. However, little is known about the evolution of the concept and associated discourses over longer periods. In this study we trace the evolution of the term moral courage over a period of more than two hundred years in the UK to examine whether and how this concept may have played a role in public discourse during past crises. We use state-of-the-art natural language processing methods to analyse 2646 newspaper articles from The Times. Moral courage was mainly connected to political topics, such as the military, domestic affairs, and foreign affairs. This contrasts with most definitions of moral courage in psychological and sociological studies. This divide between the public understanding of moral courage and the academic definitions can lead to flawed studies when not considering participant’s understanding of the concept and presents problems in communicating results that may help to counter discrimination and increase cooperation in society.