• Inclusion criteria were as follows: viral tweets from G7 world leaders, attracting a minimum of 500 'likes'; keywords 'COVID-19' or 'coronavirus'; search dates 17 November 2019 to 17 March 2020.

• Exclusion criteria were as follows: non-verified Twitter accounts and non-viral tweets.

Washington State University at Tri-Cities

•	The content analysis was performed exclusively for ‘viral’ tweets.

•	Verified Twitter accounts were sought for the G7 members.

•	Primary tweets meeting the inclusion criteria, plus any secondary tweets as part of a viral thread, were included in the analysis. 

•	No language restrictions were stipulated; Twitter’s built-in Google translate function was used for non-English tweets.

•	Top tweet characteristics included ‘likes’, ‘retweets’, ‘comments’ and ‘viral tweets’. 

•	A ‘like’ indicates that a registered Twitter user appreciates the tweet, while a ‘retweet’ indicates that they have shared the tweet on their own Twitter page and a ‘comment’ indicates that they have added written commentary for the tweet. ‘Viral’ tweets means those which rapidly spread across a high number of users. 

Methodology

Rufai, Sohaib & Bunce, Catey. (2020). World leaders' usage of Twitter in response to the COVID-19 pandemic: a content analysis. Journal of public health (Oxford, England). 
https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/article/42/3/510/5822639

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