However, the American democratic system is structured in a way that effectively equates political interest with geography. Our interests as citizens are meant to be represented by members of our towns, cities, and states. This is the case because for much of history, geographic communities were people’s primary communities. Political interest was shaped by the people you knew (who were mostly local to you), the characteristics of urban or rural environments, local industries, and so on.

But the internet has allowed for communities of interest to form independent of geography. That creates dissonance because we don’t have a mechanism for our online communities to be represented in our political system.

Conversely, many political issues are still legitimately tied to location—whether they are national issues that affect regional economies, or local issues like community infrastructure and budgeting—and yet many technological interfaces obscure those geographic realities.

These tensions can and should be addressed from both angles. On the one hand, perhaps our institutions for representing the interests of citizens can better reflect our current society. One possible approach would be creating balance between structures that emphasize geographic community with structures by which political interests can be represented irrespective of geographic location.

That dissonance can also be resolved by designing technological tools in ways that allow for better communication and participation at a local level, tying us more visibly to our geographic communities. We already see some of this in practice, whether it’s online participatory budgeting or networked tools for local communication. But we can use more experiments in this realm, including more ways for people in a local community to connect with one another and better tools for understanding and participating in local government and politics.

The internet collapses geography and expands our concept of community, yet geographic community is a cornerstone of our structures for democratic participation. As a result, we live in a society whose current reality is not properly reflected in its political system. We need to either adjust democratic institutions to better reflect our connected society or we need to create better tools to make our geography something we can effectively engage with online, or perhaps both.

Do you belong to online communities that relate to your political interests? How have those groups shaped your real-life civic involvement? To share your experience, please email hello@theatlantic.com (we may post your response in Notes.)

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