They found that the face with medical mask and microbe emoji were most closely correlated with the terms "coronavirus" and "COVID."
Next, they looked at what emoji appeared most in more than 200,000 tweets mentioning the coronavirus. This is what they found. According to Emojipedia, the top two emoji listed are consistently among the top overall on Twitter.
To account for certain emojis' overall popularity, Emojipedia compared those results to a control group. This shows which emoji increased in usage due to the coronavirus.
These eight emoji that have seen the biggest increase in usage with the coronavirus. Face screaming in fear
6. Backhand index pointing down
5. Face with medical mask
To show how the spike in certain emoji correlates to the coronavirus ,Emojipedia compared their rise to another, unrelated health emoji. The graph shows a major increase right around the time the coronavirus started spreading in the US.
