2. Participation in politics

The following chapter provides an overview of the largest area identified within participation, namely online participation in the field of politics. Within this context, participation in politics will be taken to mean a participation in political decision-making processes, although the numerous studies exhibit a fairly broad understanding of what the political field actually describes. English-language literature makes a common distinction between participation shown in civil society and political participation, whereby the latter refers to political decision-making processes in a narrow sense of state politics and the former also includes pre-state processes that may nevertheless exhibit a political character.