Table 1.
Base queries made against the Twitter API counts endpoint5 to obtain the total volume of tweets containing the above hashtags or keywords.
| Base twitter API query |
|---|
| #Covid OR #coronavirus OR covid OR coronavirus lang:en -is:retweet profile_country:GB |
| ‘Face mask’ OR ‘face covering’ lang:en -is:retweet profile_country:GB |
| Cough OR #cough lang:en -is:retweet profile_country:GB |
| Fever OR #fever lang:en -is:retweet profile_country:GB |
| Symptom OR #symptom lang:en -is:retweet profile_country:GB |
Each query was made for the following UK locations: London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham & Leicester, whereby hashtags and keywords were both queried. Aggregated tweets were filtered to be of English language and retweets were negated. The time period queried was between February 1st - August 19th 2020, spanning the duration of the first major peak in case numbers in the UK.