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Writing and revising a book for publication about the challenges that digital technologies such as social media pose for fostering democratic practice.

The Shape of Democracy is a book that deals directly with a pressing contemporary problem: how have digital technologies changed, or challenged, the traditional practices of democracy? Using examples from Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter, I show how the problems often associated with digital technologies exemplify three enduring challenges of democratic politics--the problems of 1) an expanding population, 2) self-segregation, and 3) instability. Ultimately, I argue that these three problems can be overcome, in whole or in part, by building digital spaces that meet three criteria: 1) they must have clearly marked and relatively limited boundaries, 2) those boundaries must be flexible, and 3) the resulting spaces must be stable over time.