Americans who have the luxury of Internet capability are able to instantly tweet, blog and post their every opinion to a virtual community of millions. This fosters an endless cycle of idea exchange that cross-cuts social, cultural, regional and economic divides, creating a horizontal interactive network with the power to incite collective action and to increase the vibrancy of our American democracy.

Matt Leighninger recently released a new report with the IBM Center on for the Business of Government. Using Online Tools to Engage-and be Engaged- by The Public describes how a “public manager” (an umbrella title that includes community organizers, local leaders and national legislators) can use specific technologies to harness the power of active citizenship to make informed decisions consistent with constituent values. The tools vary greatly, but each creates a virtual space for structured deliberation and expression, and promotes collaborative identification and resolution of an issue.

These virtual public spaces, Leighninger shows, have been effectively implemented at the national, regional, and local levels to resolve pressing political concerns. Citizens of New Zealand used Wikis to share a workspace and collectively revise the country’s police act. Residents of Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio participated in a regional survey which sculpted an inter-state political agenda. Residents of Manor, Texas used a web portal to post and advocate resolutions to issues of local concern.

Although virtual interaction can yield concrete results, Leighninger warns that it has a major limitation: it lacks the emotional connection and empathetic impact of face-to-face interaction, so he encourages managers to use both methods. Does web-cam communication constitute as face-to-face interaction? Still largely unexplored, questions like this remind us of the immense capabilities and confounding mysteries of the World Wide Web.