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.