Recent years have seen an explosion in social media in our everyday lives, and a corresponding increase in social media research in IS. As social media researchers, we are intrigued by the problem of virtuality and context in social media research, and how we might apply reflexive research principles to such settings. In social media, the absence of a setting's real physical boundaries (to a large extent) limits participants' ability to create a common experience at the present time and develop a history of shared experiences. As a result, we would contend that many social media researchers' interpretations of data in social media settings are often black‐boxed. In this paper, we argue that many of the challenges concerned with social media settings, by nature, are emergent and linked to their virtual and contextual features. We use the Klein and Myers (1999) framework for traditional interpretive field studies as a vehicle for unpacking these challenges. We contend that these challenges may remain unnoticed if researchers do not actively reflect upon their impact on the research process. In this paper, we present a framework for social media research, considering social media research as a reflexive space, building on the notion of three levels of reflexivity: theory, design and practice. Finally, we discuss some implications of reflexivity for qualitative social media research in IS.

中文翻译：

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虚拟研究：定性社交媒体研究中的反思性框架

近年来，社交媒体在我们的日常生活中呈爆炸式增长，而IS中社交媒体的研究也相应增加。作为社交媒体研究人员，我们对社交媒体研究中的虚拟性和情境问题以及如何将反思性研究原理应用于此类环境感兴趣。在社交媒体中，环境的实际物理边界的缺乏（在很大程度上）限制了参与者当前创造共同经验并发展共享经验的历史的能力。结果，我们认为许多社交媒体研究人员对社交媒体设置中的数据的解释通常是黑盒的。在本文中，我们认为，与社交媒体设置有关的许多挑战从本质上来说都是新兴的，并且与它们的虚拟和上下文特征相关联。我们使用Klein and Myers（1999）框架进行传统的解释性实地研究，以此来应对这些挑战。我们认为，如果研究人员不积极反思其对研究过程的影响，这些挑战可能仍然没有引起注意。在本文中，我们提出了社交媒体研究的框架，将社交媒体研究视为反思空间，它基于三个层面的反思性概念：理论，设计和实践。最后，我们讨论了反身性对于IS中定性社交媒体研究的一些含义。我们提出了一个社交媒体研究框架，将社交媒体研究视为反思空间，它基于三个层面的反思性概念：理论，设计和实践。最后，我们讨论了反身性对于IS中定性社交媒体研究的一些含义。我们提出了一个社交媒体研究框架，将社交媒体研究视为反思空间，它基于三个层面的反思性概念：理论，设计和实践。最后，我们讨论了反身性对于IS中定性社交媒体研究的一些含义。