Welfare Blogs?

When reading the articles for this week’s class, the points made in Joe Soss’ readings really stuck out. If it is true that people’s negative experiences with welfare help to form their pessimistic opinion about the government as well as their lack of participation (which does indeed sound reasonable to me), what can be done about this?

Soss conveys in his writing that these negative experiences are a result of the system’s construction, which is centered upon stipulations such as regular meetings with individual workers (under threats of termination of benefits) and other facets that generally function to decrease each recipeint’s sense of personal agency. While it would be easy to propose a reform of this program that could more successfully provide recipients with a feeling of efficacy and value, in my opinion, a vast overhaul of the Welfare system would not only be costly and probably widely unpopular with political elites, but it most likely take an extremely long time to accomplish. Therefore, we are left with the question of how this trend can be changed.
While I will not pretend to have tested, solid answers to this nebulous question, I would propose the use of new media. By using the internet and its nearly infinite resources, recipients could more actively respond to Welfare care, and could communicate their needs more effectively. Some sort of feedback tool, whether it be a blog, and Welfare forum, or anything of this nature, could in my opinion substantially improve on the attitudes that many recipients have about their Welfare benefits and the government’s role. Overall, by providing more people with a convenient way to communicate with the agency or government officials, new media forms could potentially revolutionize the relationship between welfare recipients and the government.

While it is undoubtedly true that not all citizens have access to computers or the internet, it would most certainly be easier to create and gain support for a program spreading digital technology to new communities than one changing the entire Welfare system. Again, I don’t pretend to know enough about this topic to say without a doubt that this plan would work, the Welfare system is as complex as the notion of spreading digital technology to a vast number of communities. However, I do think that instead of not changing anything because of the difficulty of changing Welfare itself people should seek out other ways to improve upon the relationship between welfare programs and those who benefit from them.