The study of civil society participation in peace negotiations has become increasingly popular. Although research has stressed the importance of coordination among civil society groups, no study has so far been conducted that studies the impact coordination among civil society groups can have on the quality of a peace agreement. This thesis aims to fill this gap by asking How does the extent of coordination among civil society groups during peace negotiations impact the quality of a peace agreement? Springing from the premise that civil society groups are aware of underlying conflict causes, this thesis argues that a high extent of civil society groups’ coordination leads to a highquality peace agreement and that this is particularly so when a civil society actor is facilitating the coordination. By applying the method of structured focused comparison, these hypotheses are tested on Guatemala, El Salvador, and Liberia. The empirical findings do not show support for the hypotheses. A variety of factors were discovered during the analysis that could have hampered the impact of civil society groups’ coordination or could hold alternative explanatory power and thus stress the need for further research.

With the changing political, economic, cultural and environmental landscape of global societies, journalistic writings on social development issues and concerns have become more relevant in recent times. Through civic advocacy journalism (CAJ), the agenda and programs of social development movements, civil society groups, international development organizations and non-government organizations are promoted and advanced. It is essential to understand the forms and representations of CAJ in practice, concepts and theories in the light of its relevance to media practice and to society at large. However, there is very little literature on the scope and extent of CAJ knowledge and practice. A researcher needs to look into actual practice and connect this with available literature to establish the application of CAJ. For this study, a qualitative content analysis method was used to assess CAJ practice in online print media reports at the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit.