DIGITAL DIARIES

VALERIE LOVE & ABI BEATSON

DESCRIPTION National Library Wellington Covid Tracer QR code poster, signed by Director-General of Health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, 9 June 2020

MAKER / ARTIST Ministry of Health Manatū Hauora

REFERENCE ATL-Group00495: Eph-C-JUNEJULY-2020/2

The Turnbull Library’s ephemera collection has a significant amount of material relating to New Zealand’s public health history. Posters, pamphlets and other publications provide public health information, and include items relating to the 1918 influenza pandemic, HIV/AIDS, the 2009 H1N1 ‘swine flu’ outbreak and the Covid-19 pandemic. The Covid-19 pandemic has some similarities to past public health emergencies in Aotearoa history, but is unique in being the first worldwide pandemic experienced and witnessed through a rapidly changing landscape of networked information communication technologies.

One item within the National Library’s Covid-19 collection that helps us to explore this technological moment is a NZ Covid Tracer QR code poster. Following the establishment of the government’s Covid-19 Alert Level system in March 2020, all businesses and workplaces were required to display this type of poster at Alert Level 1 or higher (or offer a manual sign-in option), each with a QR code that uniquely identified the building or workplace and that could be scanned via the NZ Covid Tracer mobile app. This network of posters was then used to create a private digital diary of all places visited by an individual.

If a person tested positive for Covid-19, their digital diary became part of a contact-tracing process designed to identify all of the places they had visited and when. People who were at the same place at the same time as an infected individual were then alerted to the risk of potential virus exposure and advised to get tested and selfisolate in order to break the chain of disease transmission.

These posters, combined with the NZ Covid Tracer app, were the basis for a collective form of diary-keeping never before seen in New Zealand’s history. Their design and application invite us to reflect on how diary-keeping has been repurposed from the deeply personal choice of recording our actions and reflections, to a practice of collective responsibility that can save lives.

The poster’s signature design of bold yellow and white diagonal stripes became integral with the Unite Against Covid-19 public health campaign established by the country’s Ministry of Health Manatū Hauora. The poster is now an item within the Turnbull Library’s Covid-19 collection. It was originally placed at the front entrance of the National Library’s Wellington building and was signed by Ashley Bloomfield, New Zealand’s Director-General of Health. Dr Bloomfield gained a high public profile through his regular televised briefings on the pandemic, some of which were held in the library’s auditorium.