What do we study when studying politics anddemocracy?A thematic analysis of how politics and democracy aretreated in SIGCHI conference papers

Abstract

Human–computer interaction scholars are increasingly touching on topics relatedto politics or democracy. As these concepts are ambiguous, an examination ofconcepts’ invoked meanings aids in the self-reflection of our research efforts. Weconduct a thematic analysis of all papers with the word ‘politics’ in abstract,title or keywords (n=378) and likewise 152 papers with the word ‘democracy.’We observe that these words are increasingly being used in human-computerinteraction, both in absolute and relative terms. At the same time, we show thatresearchers invoke these words with diverse levels of analysis in mind: the earlyresearch focused on mezzo-level (i.e., small groups), but more recently the workhas begun to include macro-level analysis (i.e., society and politics as played inthe public sphere). After the increasing focus on the macro-level, we see a tran-sition towards more normative and activist research, in some areas it replacesobservational and empirical research. These differences indicate semantic differ-ences, which – in the worst case – may limit scientific progress. We bring thesedifferences visible to help in further exchanges of ideas and human–computerinteraction community to explore how it orients itself to politics and democracy.