The Brief: As Coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to spread worldwide, Emojipedia has reported that certain emoji including the microbe 🦠 and face with medical mask 😷 are becoming particularly popular.

Bluesquiggle
DEEP DIVE

The Coronavirus, COVID-19 has been declared a pandemic by the WHO. As the virus spreads, so does information, misinformation, memes, and Coronavirus emoji. Although there is no official “Coronavirus emoji,” Emojipedia has released data about emoji related to viruses, illness, and medicine going “viral” on social media during this pandemic.

According to an Emojipedia blog post, tweets related to Coronavirus have been paired with health-related emoji including the face wearing mask 😷and microbe emoji 🦠. This chart shows which emoji were used the most out of a set of over 49,000 COVID-19-related tweets that used one of 12 health-related emoji:

Coronavirus Emoji
Emojipedia

While the microbe emoji 🦠actually depicts bacteria, it’s commonly used to represent viruses, germs, and disease as well.

Emojipedia’s research also looked at over 200,000 Coronavirus-related tweets to see which emoji (out of all available emoji) were used most frequently, as seen in this chart:

Coronavirus Emoji
Emojipedia

These include the Face With Tears Of Joy and Rolling on the Floor Laughing emoji, which are some of the most popular emoji on Twitter in general.

Emojipedia’s data shows that these Coronavirus-related emoji skyrocketed in popularity in February and March 2020 as Coronavirus continues to spread globally. Check out their full report here.