News media representations of people receiving income support and the production of stigma power: An empirical analysis of reporting on two Australian welfare payments

Abstract

People receiving working-age income support payments are often stigmatised as morally and/or behaviourally deficient. We consider the role of the media, as a potential source of structural stigma, in perpetuating negative characterisations of people in receipt of either the Disability Support Pension (DSP) or unemployment benefits (Newstart) during a major period of welfare reform in Australia. Newspaper articles (N = 8290) that appeared in Australia’s five largest newspapers between 2001 and 2016, and referenced either payment were analysed. We found an increased use of fraud language associated with the DSP, which coincides with increased political and policy focus on this payment. We conclude that in a period of increasing political concern with welfare reform, media coverage of welfare recipients is a form of stigma power, acting discursively as symbolic violence.

Understanding Covid-19 emergency social security measures as a from of basic income: Lessons from Australia

“…Furthermore, this inequality was exacerbated along gendered and racialised lines, where women undertook the brunt of unpaid care work leading to what commentators have called the ‘pink recession’ ( Duke, 2020 ), where the majority of those losing jobs during the lockdowns were women, who were also expected to undertake the majority of unpaid care work that increased because of the lockdowns ( Risse and Jackson, 2021 ). Matthewman and Huppatz (2020, p. 697) argued that this pink recession has the potential to undo much of the ‘hard-won progress that women have made to increase their representation in the paid workforce’. Moreover, First Nations people continued to bear the consequences of years of policy neglect, particularly in the health sector, where populations were exposed to poor health responses to Covid-19, including vaccination delays and inadequate treatment resulting in a disproportionate number of deaths.…”

“…Initially, the federal government introduced these measures under the discourse of needjobs were lost because businesses were forced to close, and workers locked down. This was acknowledgement that members of the working middle class were losing work for conditions that weren't of their making; a discourse in stark contrast to one that the government has long weaponised against the welfare class where unemployment is viewed as behavioural, despite there also not being enough jobs (Martin et al, 2022). When the positive impacts of their Covid-19 measures on the welfare class started to be more widely acknowledged through the media, the government used public appearances to again stigmatise people receiving social security payments.…”

Algorithmic accountability: robodebt and the making of welfare cheats

“…Since the restructuring of social policies under the direction of former Prime Minister John Howard, the stigmatisation of welfare recipients has intensified (Soldatic and Pini, 2009). The neoliberal reconfiguration of social policies, which aims to minimise governmental welfare expenditure and transfer welfare recipients into the workforce (Mendes, 2008), feeds the assumption that welfare recipients are abusing taxpayers' contributions (Martin et al. , 2022).…”

“…Since the restructuring of social policies under the direction of former Prime Minister John Howard, the stigmatisation of welfare recipients has intensified (Soldatic and Pini, 2009). The neoliberal reconfiguration of social policies, which aims to minimise governmental welfare expenditure and transfer welfare recipients into the workforce (Mendes, 2008), feeds the assumption that welfare recipients are abusing taxpayers' contributions (Martin et al, 2022). As a result, the surveillance of welfare recipients has increased, with most required to prove their deservedness on an ongoing basis, while also performing tasks (like applying for a certain number of jobs) as part of their "mutual" obligations (Nikidehaghani et al, 2021).…”

Super, social, medical: Person-first and identity-first representations of disabled people in Australian newspapers, 2000–2019

“…Disabled people/parents are depicted as inherently unfit in ‘mad, bad or sad’ narratives (Fraser and Llewellyn, 2015: 326). The ‘stigma power’ of mass media is highlighted, alongside the conflation of disability support with welfare fraud (Martin et al, 2022). A small-scale study of South Australian newspaper The Advertiser in 2007 found both under-representation as well as negativity in language, attitudes, tone and stereotypes (Green and Tanner, 2008).…”