Abstract
While the position of press secretaries to ministers has become routinized, we still know little about their everyday life in the political executive. This article, based on in‐depth interviews with press secretaries and an inventory of social media use conducted among ministers and press secretaries in Sweden, explores what press secretaries do and the roles and functions they fill. It addresses the overarching question of what it is really like to be government press secretary. It engages with this question through a combination of methods, mapping, and explaining patterns of behavior across related fields and strategic spaces. We argue that existing research and role typologies, while still useful, must be developed by accounting more for how press secretary work changes through new techniques and digitalization. We conclude that press secretaries fill a mix of roles and these are quite stable, but social media impacts on the daily routine of the press secretary and are a part of the work that is difficult or impossible to control. In addition, this study of Swedish press secretaries helps to redress a geographical imbalance in political communication (system) research where the focus usually is on Anglo‐American‐based scholarship and systems.
Highlights
The title of this article draws inspiration from the book “The Wages of Spin” by Bernard Ingham, Margaret Thatcher's chief press secretary. Ingham (2003), p. 16 suggests that the so-called spin-doctors are required to patrol the turbulent frontier between government and media
We argue that role typologies must account for how press secretary work changes over time through additional functional demands, notably through new techniques and digitalization
We present the results of the analysis, which we underpin by using the qualitative interview data as well as quantitative research for the social media
Summary
Funding information Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies (Östersjöstiftelsen), Grant/Award Number: 1296/3.1.1/2013. This article, based on in-depth interviews with press secretaries and an inventory of social media use conducted among ministers and press secretaries in Sweden, explores what press secretaries do and the roles and functions they fill. It addresses the overarching question of what it is really like to be government press secretary. This study of Swedish press secretaries helps to redress a geographical imbalance in political communication (system) research where the focus usually is on Anglo-American-based scholarship and systems
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