Thread by @Emojipedia

📃 Analysis of the following emojis finds tweets with 😷 or 🦠 most likely to be about COVID-19 / Coronavirus blog.emojipedia.org/spread-of-the-…

😷 Medical Mask
🤢 Nauseated
🤮 Vomiting
🤧 Sneezing
🤒 Thermometer
🤕 Bandage
🚑 Ambulance
💊 Pill
💉 Syringe
🦠 Microbe
🧼 Soap
🧽 Sponge

Tweets with the 🦠 Microbe emoji contain these words (larger = higher frequency)

Tweets with the 😷 Face with Medical Mask emoji contain these words (larger = higher frequency)

Cross-platform comparison of the 🦠 Microbe emoji. Apple appears to display a virus, while other vendors show bacteria emojipedia.org/microbe/

Cross-platform comparison of the 😷 Face with Medical Mask emoji. Microsoft displays a bead of sweat on the forehead, possibly indicating a fever emojipedia.org/face-with-medi…

🦠 Microbe and 😷 Face With Medical Mask have both seen a considerable rise alongside the global spread of COVID-19, according to Emojipedia page view data.

🤕 Face with Head-Bandage is used as a control in this data set, and shows no similar increase.

📊 In an Emojipedia analysis of over 200,000 tweets containing the phrase "Coronavirus", "COVID-19" or "COVID19", these are the most common emojis blog.emojipedia.org/spread-of-the-…

Surprised to see 😂 Face With Tears of Joy as most used emoji in coronavirus tweets? Possible explanations:

a. It's such a popular emoji; it is being used no more in coronavirus tweets than others
b. People joking or making light of coronavirus news
c. Combination of the above

By introducing a control ranking we can determine how much *more* popular an emoji is in a coronavirus-related tweet than in a regular tweet

This boosts emojis which aren't usually popular, and gives a somewhat clearer indication of which emojis have an increase for this topic

[an earlier version of this table showed an incorrect adjusted figure for Flag: Italy. The incorrect version has been deleted and replaced]

📊 Emojis most commonly included in tweets containing "Coronavirus", "COVID-19" or "COVID19" – adjusted relative to usual popularity on Twitter (adjustments shown as +/-) blog.emojipedia.org/spread-of-the-…

🇮🇹 Italy, 🇨🇳 China, 🇺🇸 USA, 🇫🇷 France, and 🇪🇸 Spain are the most used emoji flags in an Emojipedia analysis of 205,576 unique tweets containing "Coronavirus", "COVID-19" or "COVID19" from the 7th and 8th of March 2020 blog.emojipedia.org/spread-of-the-…