“Bandwagon” is one of the most common techniques in both wartime and peacetime, and plays an important part in modern advertising. Bandwagon is also one of the seven main propaganda techniques identified by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis in 1938. Bandwagon is an appeal to the voter, who is perhaps feeling mixed feelings of “aspiration” and “insecurity” to follow the crowd, to join in because others are doing so as well. Bandwagon propaganda is, essentially, trying to convince the subject that one side is the winning side, because more people have joined it. The subject is meant to believe that since so many people have joined, that “victory is inevitable and defeat impossible”: in a sense, “success” becomes a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’. Since the average person always wants to be on the winning side, he or she is compelled to join in.

When confronted with bandwagon propaganda, we should weigh the pros and cons of joining in independently from the amount of people who have already joined, and, as with most types of propaganda, we should seek more information. Thankfully, there are prominent disability campaigners, such as Sue Marsh and Kaliya Franklin, who have a very good, accurate command of the actual DWP data (as reported). In layman’s term the bandwagon effect refers to people doing certain things because other people are doing them, regardless of their own beliefs, which they may ignore or override. The perceived “popularity” of an object or person may have an effect on how it is viewed on a whole. Hence, it is entirely fitting that George Osborne should wish to give a speech on welfare reform to a group of employees in Sittingbourne, who “all share his concerns” about the small proportion of people in the population who are freeloading. This effect is noticed and followed very much by youth, where for instance if people see many of their friends buying a particular phone, they could become more interested in buying that product.

The history of this concept is interesting. A bandwagon is a wagon which carries the band in a parade, circus or other entertainment. The phrase “jump on the bandwagon” first appeared in American politics in 1848 when Dan Rice, a famous and popular circus clown of the time, used his bandwagon and its music to gain attention for his political campaign appearances. As his campaign became more successful, other politicians strove for a seat on the bandwagon, hoping to be associated with his success. Later, during the time of William Jennings Bryan’s 1900 presidential campaign, bandwagons had become standard in campaigns, and “jump on the bandwagon” was used as a derogatory term, implying that people were associating themselves with the success without considering what they associated themselves with. Often political commentators will say something which captures this derogatory nature like, “Ed Miliband has jumped so fast onto this moving bandwagon, that he’s likely to fall off it.”

The government is increasingly using value-laden and pejorative language when discussing benefits and welfare, something poverty charities warn is likely to increase the stigmatisation of poor people. The findings show that the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, has spoken of a mass culture of welfare dependency in every speech on benefits he has made in the past 12 months. The analysis came after complaints that the government is using exceptional cases such as that of Mick Philpott, the unemployed man jailed this week for the manslaughter of six children, to justify its programme of changes to the benefits system. The problem of using single cases to make a general point was highlighted by Diane Abbott who, this week, warned about drawing general conclusions about Austrian villages from the Josef Fritz case and Owen Jones who, also this week, warned about making unreliable inferences about inheritance tax from the Stephen Seddon case. Indeed, an examination of Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) speeches and press notices connected to benefits in the year to April 1 shows a significantly increased use of terms such as “dependency”, “entrenched” and “addiction”, when compared with the end of the Labour government. Fraud, which currently accounts for less than 1% of the overall benefits bill, was mentioned 85 times in the press releases, while it was not used at all in the final year of Labour. In the 25 speeches by DWP ministers on welfare over the year, “dependency” was mentioned 38 times, while “addiction” occurred 41 times and “entrenched” on 15 occasions. A comparison of 25 speeches on the subject by Labour ministers saw the words used, respectively, seven times, not at all, and once.

Whatever the ultimate success of the Coalition’s war of words against “scroungers” and “skivers”, casualties of the ‘bandwagon’ will continue to attract attention. This use of language is, unfortunately, of huge concern. In previous years, there has been documented reliably a rise in hate crimes against disabled people, police figures for England, Wales and Northern Ireland show. For example, more than 2,000 such offences were recorded in 2011, up a third on 2010. Police said this was partly due to an increased willingness to report crimes. Strikingly, this statistic was in the context that, overall, hate crimes linked to race, religion, sexual orientation and disability fell by 3,600 to 44,500.