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A critical examination of the Department for Work and Pensions' `Targeting Benefit Fraud' campaign

University of Wolverhampton

This article examines the use of imagery and language in New Labour's attempts to shift public attitudes to benefit fraud. A critical discourse analysis of the Department for Work and Pensions' `Targeting Benefit Fraud' campaign is provided, where it is argued that the campaign portrays those who commit fraud as a threatening other, whose presence necessitates and legitimates the government's increased use of technical, legislative and punitive mechanisms for managing `problem populations'. As a whole, the campaign represents a `politics of enforcement' that is derived from and helps constitute a moral authoritarianism. It is argued that the Targeting Benefit Fraud campaign needs to be understood, not just as an attempt to educate or inform the public about the problems of benefit fraud, but as part of a raft of measures that attempt to legitimize an `employment first' welfare state and reconfigure relationships between citizens and the state.

Key Words: discourse • imagery • language • New Labour • welfare

Critical Social Policy, Vol. 27, No. 2, 231-252 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0261018306075712


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