Sara Wesolek | 2026 I.S. Symposium
:Sara Wesolek
վٱ:“Embarrassed, Frustrated, Unfairly Judged”: Examining the Relationship between Media Frames of Welfare Recipients and Recipient Behavior
Majors: Political Science; Sociology
Advisors: Michele Leiby; Seiko Matsuzawa
Individuals who receive government assistance, such as SNAP and Medicaid, are vulnerable to media coverage that frames them as undeserving of the assistance they receive. This study seeks to answer the question: how do media portrayals of welfare recipients and perceived judgement affect recipient behavior? Scholars argue that a country’s welfare arrangement socializes attitudes towards welfare benefits and those who claim it. Unlike universal welfare regimes in Sweden and Norway, the liberal (or “selective”) regime in the United States reserves public assistance for only the neediest, most “deserving” citizens, and the media, as institutional actors, perpetrate such narratives. Using theories from Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, and Erving Goffman, I theorize that when institutional actors produce frames, individuals internalize those frames and shift their behavior in response. This thesis examines national news coverage of recipients through latent content analysis, and the effects, if any, of such coverage on recipient self-regulatory behaviors. The findings suggest that “(un)deserving” media consumption may not directly influence recipient behaviors. However, participants tend to internalize perceived judgement and self-regulate their behavior as a result. With this in mind, future research should further explore self-regulation, perceived judgement, and the relationship between the two. This research contributes to the collection of welfare scholarship while also recommending public service announcement campaigns and increased trainings that emphasize the critical role perceived judgement has in recipient’s perceptions of themselves, their behaviors, and the world around them.
Posted in Symposium 2026 on May 1, 2026.
