News media representations of people receiving income support: Stigma as part of the machinery of welfare retraction

Power to Persuade is featuring articles this week by some of Australia’s leading social policy scholars and advocates involved in a recent workshop, Rethinking Welfare and Conditionality in Australia. The workshop was convened by the Social Security Research Policy and Practice Network, a group of people from universities, advocacy organisations, and community services providers focused on achieving a fairer and more equitable social security system. More information about the Social Security Research Policy and Practice Network, and links to videos from the workshop, are provided below this article.

Today, Dr Sonia Martin (RMIT) shares a summary of research she published with Timothy Schofield (University of Melbourne) and Peter Butterworth (ANU) in Critical Social Policy, titled ‘News media representations of people receiving income support and the production of stigma power: An empirical analysis of reporting on two Australian welfare benefits’. This post explores the media’s role in perpetuating stigma of working-age people in receipt of income support payments.

Much has been written about the punitive nature of Australia’s system of income support and the pejorative assumptions about those in receipt of working-age payments. The so-called problem of unemployment has been attributed to individuals perceived as disempowered by the provision of state-funded benefits and who actively ‘defraud’ or ‘cheat’ the social security system (eg here, here, and here).

Considerable changes to Australia’s social security system have taken place over the last three decades. Following the ‘mutual obligation’ measures introduced by a Howard-led coalition government (1996-2007), successive governments have maintained Australia suffers from a culture of ‘welfare dependency’, and the state has been complicit in this (eg here). The increasing shift to marketisation and ‘welfare conditionality’, and the ways in which these shifts have intensified inequalities and social exclusion has similarly been well documented (eg here, here).

What is less well understood is the role of the Australian news media in shaping constructions of the behaviours and morality of those in receipt of payments. Drawing on the concept of ‘stigma-power’ (here, here), we considered the role of the news media in perpetuating negative characterisations of people receiving either the Disability Support Pension (DSP) or unemployment benefit (then Newsart) during an intense period or reform (2001-2016).

The DSP has been a particular target of reform. Changes to the eligibility and compliance measures in 2012 were significant, as people were assessed on their ability to perform certain tasks rather than on medical diagnoses. This policy change led to a sharp decline in the number of people deemed eligible for DSP, which fell from a peak of 89,000 new clients in 2009-10 to 32,000 in 2016-17 (here). We suspect this decline has been aided by negative media constructions of people in receipt income support payments generally and the DSP in particular.

The Research

For our analysis we drew a distinction between two forms of negative language. ‘Fraud’ was used to capture reports of individuals actively ‘cheating’ or ‘abusing’ the social security system. ‘Pejorative’ was used to classify reports of individuals with ‘poor behaviour’ enabled by the states perceived generosity. Both constructs are negative, however, fraud has an added dimension of deliberate and unlawful activity.

We searched Australia’s five most read newspapers for articles (N=8,290) about the DSP or Newstart. We then analysed the language in each article.

We identified the political leaning of each newspaper: The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun and The Australian as right, and the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age as left.  Nonetheless, this distinction conceals the lack of diversity in print news media ownership in Australia. While radio and tv are moderately concentrated in comparison, electronic media is often dependent upon newsfeeds from press journalists, and these are predominantly held by News Corp (here).  The impact of such concentration on democracy has been the subject of a recent parliamentary inquiry.  It is also worth noting that while the news media landscape has changed considerably in recent decades, newspapers remain influential (here). 

What we found

Our analysis showed recipients of both payments continued to be constructed over the period. In line with policy trends moving people from DSP to Newstart from 2012, the volume of articles about both payments increased. As such, there is no evidence that the news media reporting shifted from an elevated focus on unemployment benefits to a focus on DSP, rather the two benefits continued to receive negative attention.

The more notable finding is the significant increase in the use of fraud language in articles mentioning the DSP commencing in the lead-up to the 2012 policy change. The increased focus on fraud in relation to the DSP, particularly evident in the right leaning papers, suggests that those in receipt of DSP were being subjected to increasing public scrutiny and growing suspicion of the veracity of their claims.

Stigma as part of the machinery of welfare retraction

Our findings illustrate the discursive power of stigma in news media reporting. The promulgation of a deficit view of people in receipt of the payments may be understood as a mechanism for individualising perceived ‘benefit dependency’ in neoliberal welfare systems. Not only do people suffer the shame and indignity of a punitive and residual system, they experience the injustice that arises from personalised accounts of their circumstance. The political use-value of welfare stigma is that is legitimises policies of austerity and obviates the need for governments to do anything other. It is in this respect, that stigmatised news media accounts may be considered part of the machinery of welfare retraction.

About the author:

Dr Sonia Martin is a lecturer in Social Work and the Program Manager for the Bachelor of Social Work (Honours) and the Bachelor of Social Work (Honours)/Bachelor of Social Science (Psychology) at RMIT.

Links to videos from the Rethinking Welfare and Conditionality in Australia workshop:

·       Opening and panel on welfare-care-nexus - https://youtu.be/anHNZfzLV6U

·       Stigma in welfare policy and practice - https://youtu.be/r0MuLc4gyqo

·       Panel on employment services and welfare-to-work - https://youtu.be/cLbY50m5JRM

·       Closing discussion - https://youtu.be/7JyAHjN0DMA

About the Social Security Research Policy and Practice Network: 

The Social Security Research Policy and Practice Network is a group of over 30 people from universities, advocacy organisations, and community services providers who are focused on achieving a social security system that affords people dignity and economic security. Its members include representatives from the Brotherhood of St Laurence, the Australian Council of Social Services, Family Care, and the Anti-Poverty Centre as well as researchers from the University of Melbourne, Monash University, RMIT, Swinburne University, the Australian National University, Sydney University, the University of New South Wales, and the University of Queensland – all of whom work on the impacts of welfare conditionality on people’s lives and the frontline delivery of programs. The network formed in 2018 following the visit of Prof Sharon Wright (University of Glasgow) from the UK Welfare Conditionality project to Australia, and it has previously organised streams of the Australian Social Policy Conference.

Content moderator Dr Sue Olney