Has COVID-19 caused a devaluation of the ruble and the currencies of developing countries?

Developing country currencies experienced strong fluctuations during the pandemic. In order to clarify the reasons of the high volatility of the Russian ruble, the Brazilian real and the Indian rupee we investigate the impact of COVID-19, its coverage in the social media and inquire about the coronavirus in Google on the exchange rates of the currencies in the study on the dollar during the period of high volatility from 01.01.2020 to 30.04.2020. Based on the works on crowd psychology, and behavioural finance, we theorise about the effects of coronavirus attention and hysteria (hype) around it on currency markets. Based on the developed GARCH models, we empirically prove that an increase in the number of publications on coronavirus in the national segment of Facebook and Instagram was accompanied by a rise in the volatility of national currencies. Such results were observed for the exchange rates of the rouble, the real and the rupee. We proved the presence of a hype-effect around COVID-19 in case of the USD/RUB exchange rate. With heightened interest in the coronavirus, the effect manifested itself in an increase in the degree to which COVID-19 coverage in social media affected the volatility of the ruble exchange rate.