KU one of the first to warn students about Covid-19

A recent study has revealed that Kingston University was one of the first universities in the UK to tweet about Covid-19 in 2020.

Joint research by London South Bank University (LBSU) and the University of Essex has revealed that KU was the third university in the country to tweet about coronavirus on 23 January 2020.

“At a time when the UK government was relatively slow to act at the start of the Covid-19 outbreak in the UK, universities were forced to take matters into their own hands,” said co-author of the study, Dr Barbara Czarnecka, Associate Professor of Marketing at LBSU.

“Our research shows that around 94% of UK universities tweeted about Covid-19 before the first national lockdown was announced in March 2020.” 

Only the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (9 January) and the University of Greenwich (21 January 2020) were quicker to tweet about Covid-19.  

According to the findings, 148 of a total 158 institutions were using Twitter to communicate about the pandemic ahead of March last year.

The research also revealed that March 6 2020 was the day 18 universities tweeted about Covid-19 for the first time.

However, by 20 March 2020, at the start of the first lockdown when “stay at home” orders were announced, ten universities still had not tweeted about Covid-19.