AI finds the cultural shifts hidden in British newspapers from 1800 to 1950

From a nation defined by cricket, steam engines and horses to a celebrity-obsessed, football-mad country, Britain has undergone huge cultural changes between 1800 and 1950. The history of the country is well-documented in books, but a new analysis has used a different source, newspapers, to pinpoint exactly when these shifts in culture took place. A group of computer scientists have developed artificial intelligence software to analyse articles from 120 British newspapers between 1800 and 1950, and revealed key turning points in our culture. In 2011, a huge analysis of five million books taken from over 200 years provided the first clues to what insights can be gained from analysing words on such a huge scale. But the project was criticised for only counting words, and ignored the context they were based in.