Professionaliseringen och valarbetaren

Abstract In today’s political communication, there is an on going current professionalization. This is a growing phenomenon in Sweden, and the political communication moves towards the American one, which is defined as the most professionalized in the world. The professionalization is defined by parties hiring specialized competence in forms of advertising agencies, PR agencies etcetera, and this may create less space for the nonprofit campaign workers (Strömbäck, 2009), who may have a passion for politics, but not the specialized competence. This study is aimed to examine the nonprofit workers attitude towards the professionalization, their motivation towards nonprofit work and if the motivation is affected by the professionalization. The result is analyzed with Sensemaking theories and Enactment theories, which help to explain why the respondents put all that effort in nonprofit work. A qualitative method is used to examine this purpose. Five respondents from the two biggest parties in Sweden were interviewed about products that define the professionalization, such as campaign methods, the centralization of campaign development, etcetera. The result shows that the respondents have a positive attitude towards the professionalization of the political communication that Sweden have attained in the moment, but they have not that good attitude towards the American political communication, which Sweden is moving towards (Oscarsson & Holmberg, 2004). One interesting result was that the three respondents from The Conservative Party, had a more positive attitude towards the professionalization than the two respondents from The Social Democrats. Where it differs is the questions regarding the parties being more market oriented, which is a part of the professionalization. The respondents from The Conservative Party were positive about that, but the respondents from The Social Democrats were not. They wanted a much more ideology-based politic rather than a market orientated one. The result about the motivation for nonprofit work shows that there are mainly three factors that motivate them: self-fulfilling, the chance to affect and the political ideology. The ideology was the biggest motivator. An Enactment Theory and Enactment Sensemaking were important theories to be able to strike these conclusions. There is no sign that the professionalization reduces their motivation against nonprofit work, but there are tendencies in their answers that show that they are aware of the importance of a good political communication, which seems to be a motivator for them, and seems to be important for them.