Hundreds of thousands of poor people say they have been put off applying for or collecting benefits because of the perceived stigma generated by false media depictions of "scroungers" – leading many to forgo essentials such as food and fuel, a new report claims.

Analysis by researchers, led by the University of Kent's social policy team, said polls and focus groups had revealed a quarter of claimants had "delayed or avoided asking for" vital welfare payments because of "misleading news coverage driven by [government] policy".

This "climate of fear" means 1.8 million people have potentially been too scared to seek help they are entitled to from the state. Such is the scale of successive governments' disinformation that the report calls for ministers to abandon briefing journalists ahead of their speeches and asks Whitehall departments to seek corrections "for predictable and repeated media misinterpretations".

The researchers tested the accuracy of recent government statements and found them lacking. The report highlights that ministers – including the chancellor, George Osborne – had claimed there were families taking £100,000 a year in housing benefit. In fact there were only five such families in the UK.

Last year ministers appeared to brief that 1,360 people had been off work for a decade with diarrhoea, when in fact they had severe bowel diseases and cancer.

The report, entitled Benefits Stigma in Britain and commissioned by Turn2us, part of the anti-poverty charity Elizabeth Finn, examined more than 6,000 articles on social security between 1995 and 2011 from the major newspapers – the Times, the Mirror, the Guardian, the Independent, the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, the Sun and the Daily Express.

Benefit fraud remains a popular topic for papers: 30% of all articles dwell on the issue even though, the report points out, rates of fraud do not rise beyond 3%.

The study shows that disproportionate coverage of fraud is linked to higher levels of stigma, with the readers of "stigmatising newspapers", such as the Sun, believing there were "higher levels of deception within the welfare system".

Not all newspapers were the same. The authors admitted there was "enormous variation" between titles, with the share of articles using negative language – terms that connote dishonesty, lack of effort or dependency – ranging from 78% in the Sun to 36% in the Guardian.

However, the authors said the country was "seeing a surge in negative stories compared to the previous 10 years", noting that the amount of coverage is now comparable to 1998 when Labour arrived with a big "welfare reform" agenda.

The big change in coverage in recent years, says the report, is to focus on "scroungers" as opposed to "cheats". It says this shift began in 2008, when "scrounging" replaced fraud as the main welfare issue covered in the press – at a time when the then Labour government was developing tests for incapacity benefit recipients and the Conservatives were pushing the idea of "broken Britain".

The report says three newspapers – the Sun, Mail and Express – show an "exceptional focus" on claimants' apparent "lack of effort".

"The papers in question are often accused of promoting a 'scrounger rhetoric' with regard to claimants. That accusation seems to be well-founded."

Another theme that has emerged in recent years is the idea that benefit spending is high because of large families on out-of-work benefits. Stories referring to large families more than doubled in frequency after 2003, accounting today for some 7.4% of articles.

However, the charity says families with more than five children account for just 1% of out-of-work benefit claims. "Very large households with 10 or more children are a staple of tabloid shock stories. There are 180 such claimant households in Britain," says the report.

Rob Tolan, head of policy at Turn2us, said the rhetoric was affecting the public. "At a human level, stigma sees the elderly, sick and disabled people skipping meals or keeping the heating off … One lady we helped, who was left disabled by a brain tumour, ate porridge five nights a week, rather than ask for help."

Moreover, there are fears that hardening attitudes have translated into an increase in verbal and even physical attacks on claimants.

A 2011 survey showed that nearly half of disabled people had experienced a worsening of attitudes towards them and in February, the six major disability charities issued a warning about "an increase in resentment and abuse directed at disabled people, as they find themselves being labelled scroungers".

A spokesperson for the Department for Work and Pensions said: "There is an ongoing debate about the state of the current benefit system, but we are always very clear that it is the system that is failing individuals, not the other way around.

"Currently people are being trapped in dependency or are missing out on the support they are entitled to entirely. Our reforms will end the benefits trap, but will also make it easier for people to claim the help they need."