Historical Touchstones and Imagined Futures During COVID-19 in Aotearoa/New Zealand

ABSTRACT During the COVID-19 pandemic to date, particular histories have come to serve as touchstones for the pandemic experience. The specific form this historical imagination takes can be significant as it is likely to shape people’s understandings and responses to the pandemic with consequences for official policy, community action and public behaviour. This research examines this imaginative space in Aotearoa/New Zealand’s public media during COVID-19, asking what past epidemics have been invoked and how. We conducted a content and thematic analysis of media stories in Aotearoa/NZ from February 2020 to December 2021. This analysis reveals how historical experiences are made meaningful in the context of the present crisis, and how the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted New Zealanders to look back on their histories for lessons and cautionary tales as they imagine possible futures. While the 1918 flu was the most frequent touchstone in both years, the focus of the stories changed, reflecting changes in public health policies. In 2020, the stories mirrored the major public health measures enacted by the government, namely isolation and quarantine requirements and lockdowns. They focused on anchoring the present in past experiences, collectively framing the ‘extraordinary’ as something more ‘ordinary’ and thus helping people to cope with the new crisis. In 2021, the focus on Māori populations increased, reflecting the emerging disparities in vaccination rates, as did explicit messaging encouraging vaccination. The sense of urgency grew, with the past providing impetus for present action, to bring about—or avert—particular imagined futures.