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Drawing on the theoretical framework of Grabe and Bucy (2009), this chapter presents the findings of an exploratory study concerning the visual self-presentation strategies that the political leaders of the two main political parties in Greece (Syriza and New Democracy) employed in their political adverts on YouTube during the campaign for the 2019 European Parliamentary elections. The findings illustrate that, despite the fact that both leaders made equal use of the two master frames, of the ideal candidate and the populist campaigner, their visual strategies differed in the emphasis given to the various subdimensions of the visual framework. Both leaders attempted to project a public persona characterised by ordinariness and professionalism. Tsipras used a series of spots through which he sought to both ‘renew’ his relationship with the electorate and reinforce perceptions of his statesmanship as a widely respected political leader. Mitsotakis' visual strategy was primarily based on building a more relatable image and strengthening his leadership profile, as well as the frequent use of patriotic symbols.

The introduction of new communicative ethics in political communication has imposed new procedures and values in politics. The close interrelation of media and politics has many facets and effects on the way politics is exercised and on how it is perceived by the citizens. This chapter investigates how new methods of political communication have been introduced and internalised in Greek politics. By taking into account critical political events and in particular elections and relevant studies, the ‘Greek media democracy’ is divided into six periods covering a time span from 1981 to the present. The division and analysis underline the milestones and transition paths in Greek politics towards new communicative and political ethics. The rationale of our research is commensurate with many comparative studies which emphasise the importance of the context in the adaptation of the ‘Americanized’ political communication model. This chapter reflects how the specific sociopolitical context of the country has interfered, defined and shaped the adaptation of ‘imported’ methods in political communication and how these methods have resulted in significant changes and shifts in Greek media democracy and Greek politics in general.

This chapter theorises the Internet in Greece by placing it at the centre of Greek media offering a political economy which recasts it in a culturalist fashion. To achieve this, it critically addresses the country's alleged lag in cyberspace and asks why the Internet's hegemonic role in the advance of neoliberal policies and technoliberalism worldwide was never performed in Greece. It places the countrywide disdain for the technoliberal subject at the core of understanding of why the web mediations where so neatly denied over three decades across industry, policy and research. It centres around Internet remediations to argue that the Internet in Greece has been conceptualised as a nonmedia through the idea of lagging behind, essentially a construct veiling neoliberalism at work. It situates the advent of the web in Greece's media boom to argue that media power, as articulated in Greece, necessarily excluded the web, fetishising terrestrial broadcasting on the way to the neoliberal dismantling of culture, the media and everyday life, way before the Troika.

Through social media communities, politicians communicate personal or even private information and seek to take advantage of the possibilities to connect with both influential personalities and ordinary people. Politicians' Instagram use can be understood as a way of producing visual flows of professional, personal and private practices.

The current research seeks to compare the ways in which the leaders of the three major political parties in Greece (New Democracy, SYRIZA and KINAL) form their ‘image’ through their Instagram posts during a multiple consecutive elections (pre-)electoral period (2019 European, Prefectural/Municipal and general elections) and a nonelectoral period (2018), in order to trace similarities and differences in the communication strategies of the abovementioned politicians during these periods. Among others, politicians post private aspects of their lives during both periods; they focus predominantly on the formation of a positive self-image, instead of attacking their political opponents and increase the number of personal images during the (pre-)electoral period of our study.

The purpose of this chapter is to shed light on the interrelationships that exist between politicians' Twitter agendas, news websites agendas and public agendas at the first level during the 2019 Greek Parliamentary elections for the two front-runners of the elections, Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Alexis Tsipras. Three researches were conducted to assess the issues agendas of candidates' tweets, news websites coverage as well as the issue importance of the public for an 18-day period prior to the elections. At the issue level, although Twitter and media agendas align more, they are distinct from public agenda. Overall, Twitter proved to be an ineffective tool for influencing the news websites and public agendas during the 2019 Greek Parliamentary elections with online media agendas being slightly more powerful. Moreover, the public agenda did play a role in shaping Twitter as well as media content but in a counterbalancing manner. In addition, this study confirmed that agenda building and setting dynamics at both levels vary based on the issue and candidate being analysed.

The ‘symbiotic’ relationship between media and politics has multiple effects on the way political elites act and behave. However, only limited attention has been given on the impact of contemporary media in the emerging, recruitment and composition of the political elites. Drawing heavily on the various approaches of social, political and media capital, this chapter paper seeks to explore the main profiles and paths of the politicians having practised media-related professions, during the last 30 years in Greece. For the scopes of our research we will take advantage of two related databases offering quantitative data. Our analysis demonstrates that media have a considerable impact in political selection procedure given the fact that elected candidates with a media background have increased considerably during the last years, their candidacies are mainly addressed to wide electorates, while media constitutes an important path for the elections in political elites' positions.