In times when political debates are being conducted on social networks and algorithms are shaping political communication, freedom of expression is being cast in a new light and the criteria for "content moderation" are being questioned. Especially since the establishment of the Oversight Board by the company Meta, in response to the new challenges of the platform, the question arises to what extent the decisions of an independent complaints board can redefine freedom of expression on social media. One of the most well-known cases to date is the Oversight Board's blocking of Donald Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts in response to the president's calls on social media that led to the riots of the 6^th of January in 2020.

This work focuses on the question of the influence of decisions made by the Oversight Board on the fragmentation of political communication. The methodology case study was used and the case of the blocking of Donald Trump's accounts was examined. The circumstances and previous events of the case were analyzed using the dimensions of structural change from Dohle et al. An extensive literature review and analysis of the case led to a comprehensive insight into the possible effects of decisions by the oversight board.  Aspects from different scientific disciplines were consulted in order to take a differentiated and holistic view of the topic.

This paper emphasizes that a simple examination of the social network Facebook and Instagram is not sufficient to gain a comprehensive impression of the fragmentation of political communication on the platform and that an answer to the research question is therefore limited. Nevertheless, based on the findings of the paper it can be assumed that the decision of the Oversight Board of blocking Donald Trump on social media only had minor influence on fragmentation. Further it can be presumed that the decision could not counteract the mechanisms of fragmentation.

“They say there’s nothing more complex than the human brain. They haven’t worked in Brussels, have they?” This infamous advertisement slogan by the newspaper POLITICO summarizes the perception of the complex nature of the European political system in Brussels.

When organizations choose to engage in interest representation in Brussels the sheer number of relevant stakeholders can appear quite overwhelming in the beginning. With such a complex interrelated system, it seems logical that organizations choose to engage in interest coalitions, where the collaboration with like-minded partners helps to navigate the complexity. On the other hand, organizations engaged in collective action limit their autonomy to voice their individual interests by aligning policy preferences, and they need to invest resources in a collaboration, whose success is uncertain. So, what is it, that convinces organizations to become a member of an interest coalition?

To answer this question, the thesis is set up as explorative case study. Utilizing the incentive theory, I identify the different incentives for organizations to become a member of the coalition. But in the thesis, I demonstrate, that the potential profits through coalitions are not sufficiently explaining the decision of organizations. Rather it is necessary to look at various dimensions of interest coalitions, that influence the decision process of organizations. With this thesis, I contribute to the research on lobbying in the European Union by adding a new perspective on a yet underexamined policy area, the research and innovation policy.

This thesis aims to grasp a deeper understanding on how the public and the parliamentary debate are interconnected. Are the same topics discussed on both levels, and if so, in which arena does a topic gain salience first? The author's goal is to advocate for modeling country and debate-specific topics individually, providing a comprehensive understanding of crucial dimensions within specific debates for future research. Using the German abortion debate as a case study, the thesis provides valuable insights into how to model highly correlated but syntactically differing text corpora.

Collecting both Tweets and plenary protocols, the state-of-the-art topic model, BERTopic was fine-tuned to extract meaningful dimensions out of these two corpora. It was thereby selected due to the high complexity of the data coming from one debate but two corpora and its ability to include the words' (bidirectional) contexts. Overall, the analysis revealed that the German abortion debate is multifaceted, encompassing not only traditional pro-choice and pro-life positions but also incorporating religious, medical, and feminist perspectives.

The parliamentary and the public debate were thereby found to be highly similar regarding the discussed topics. Parliamentarians can thereby either try to establish new policy issues by proactively emphasising them (issue ownership theory) or ride the wave on already publicly salient topics showing responsiveness to their voters’ concerns (riding the wave theory). Due to the public openness of the plenary debates and the unique chance for parliamentarians to make an impression on their voters, which are the target audience of the debate, parliamentarians are expected to opt for riding the wave behaviour. This kind of behavior was found both for the discussed topics and the corpus sequence, whereby a time series analysis showed that for many topics the public debate preceedes the parliamentary debate.

"Never let a good crisis go to waste" famously said by Winston Churchill as he was helping create the United Nations. With the Covid-19 pandemic being one of the largest crises in recent years, affecting nearly all aspects of modern life and providing opportunities for nearly all political stakeholders, I am interested in how the Covid-19 pandemic affected policy making in the European Union. I specifically want to find out how such a crisis affected interest representation in the EU and in this context how it influenced so called "throughput legitimacy" of the EU policy making process.

Briefly defined throughput legitimacy concerns the quality of governance processes, as judged by accountability, transparency, inclusiveness and openness of governance processes (Schmidt, 2013).  Ever since its creation the EU had to deal with concerns regarding its democratic legitimacy and precisely these concerns. Because the pandemic is likely to have affected all of these aspects, it is vital to explore exactly how this type of legitimacy was affected during the pandemic and whether the potential changes can remain today.

By analyzing key documents, meetings by lobbyists with the European Commission and online social media behaviour of large stakeholders during the policy making process of the Digital Markets Act in the pandemic, I am taking a snapshot of one of the most lobbied pieces of legislation and its creation during the pandemic. With this effort I hope to translate my learnings and conclusions to other policy fields and fill the research gap of EU lobbying during the pandemic.