The Strategic Communication and News Media Laboratory was founded in September 2015 under the scientific supervision of assistant professor Dr. Athanassios N. Samaras. The Laboratory was founded in September 2015 as an institutional form of the ad hoc Research Unit on Rhetoric Communication and Persuasion that operated since 2012.

The Laboratory’s mission is to fill the gap between the scientific fields of International Relations with Communication and Media Studies and contribute to the development of the interdisciplinary field of International Political Communication.

The Laboratory provides the Department of International and European Studies with research and education expertise on the fields of Strategic Communication, Argumentation, Rhetorical Communication and Persuasion in the context of both domestic politics and international politics, Media Studies, News Analysis, Nation Banding, Images of Nations, Cultural Diplomacy and Intercultural and International Communication.

The Strategic Communication and News Media Laboratory focuses its research upon:

1. The rhetorical dimensions of IR and the systematic analysis in the rhetorical construction of narratives and persuasion procedures in International politics.

2. Domestic and Foreign dimension of political communication and its dialectic.

3. Strategic Communication and the communicational aspect of Strategic Studies.

4. Sociology of News and Theories on State-Media Relations.

5. Frames and Framing

6. Qualitative and quantitative content analysis in the traditional and new media

7. Images of nations in the news; State-Mapping as a content analysis approach.

8. Political Communication and Media in the European Union.

9. News Media Effects in Foreign Policy.

10. Home Front Management and Media – Military Relations.

11. Ad Hominem Arguments

12. Blame Games, Image Restoration Strategies and the Rhetorical Aspect of CrisisManagement

13. Public Diplomacy and Soft Power

14. Persuasion and Propaganda analysis

15. Public Opinion in Foreign Policy

16. Country-bashing in political communication

17. Nation Branding,

18. Country of Origin Effect and Consumer Ethnocentrism.

19. The communicational aspects of Environmental, Technological and Health issues.

20. Skills development in intercultural communication