Table 2 Base queries made against the Twitter API data endpoint8 to obtain tweet objects containing the hashtags and keywords stated, where tweet locations originated from the UK.

From: Evaluation of Twitter data for an emerging crisis: an application to the first wave of COVID-19 in the UK

Base twitter API query

Number of unique tweets

#Covid OR #coronavirus OR covid OR coronavirus

771,776

Face mask’ OR ‘face covering’

33,641

  1. 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. The number of unique tweet objects obtained for each query during this time period is indicated.
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