Sociology

Business

Qualitative research

Pedagogy

Appreciative inquiry

Service (business)

Social science

Knowledge management

Biology

Marketing

Paleontology

Data science

Context (archaeology)

Computer science

Service Business

Drawn upon appreciative inquiry (AI) and actor-network theory (ANT), this study proposes a new qualitative research framework for the study of the online social network (OSN) service. Integrating and applying AI and ANT will inspire OSN participants’ imagination and creation to a greater extent and thus the maximum benefits of OSN can be explored, and as a consequence OSN itself can further be improved in the service business context. This study gives a detailed discussion on the proposed framework in terms of its advantages and disadvantages, the suggestions for overcoming the disadvantages and the future research agenda in the area of OSN.

An integrative research framework for the online social network service