Emanating from Russia in the east and the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant (ISIL) in the south, the EU has been increasingly hit by destabilising messages
amounting – in different forms and to different degrees – to coherent hostile
‘strategic communications’ campaigns, or the processes of infusing communications
activities with an agenda or plan to impact the behaviour of a target audience. Both
Russia and ISIL have engaged in aggressive messaging and deceptive media
campaigns, albeit with distinct narratives, targets and audiences. This paper analyses
the ‘what’ and the ‘how’: the respective narratives of each actor, their specificities,
their similarities and their differences. The analysis also draws attention to strategic
communications efforts undertaken by the EU, which are vectored into defensive
(react and respond) and offensive (probe and push) dimensions. This understanding
of the present context finally allows for an evaluation of what actions can be taken to
enhance the effectiveness of the EU’s own strategic communications