As the famous saying goes “The map is not the territory” while working with data it needs to be kept in mind, that a dataset is not some kind of absolute truth representation.

The significant differences in the distribution by country  must, of course, be properly contextualized in order to make a meaningful interpretation.

The low proportion of searches for the term mask + corona in Russia does not mean that people there are less

interested than in Germany, where the topic has superseded almost everything else over the entire year, giving the famous German Angst yet another example.

The data picture here tells the story that the Google Search Engine is not as widely used in Russia as in the other two countries. Russians rather turn to their own search engines with their questions (e.g. Yandex)

The Google Trends dataset is divided into two parts: The top search queries are presented on an index and show the most extensive searches. The rising search queries are listed without an index – they rather indicate requests which are on the rise and which echo social topics that gain momentum.

In other words — there are stories to be found in rising. Stories that unfold along the same categories, with the vital difference that it is precisely the new pandemic categories that come to play here.

In addition, the evolution of the mask takes another decisive step: the famous people category mutates – if you will – into  pandemic people. Search queries resulting from a connection between politicians or celebrities and masks refer almost exclusively to corona masks now.

The evolution ends firmly linked to political actors as well as the capitalist system in the form of a fashion accessory.