Generating Impactful Situated Explanations through Digital Trace Data

Progressively, information systems (IS) researchers draw on digital trace data to capture the emergent dynamics of today’s digitalized world. Digital trace data enable researchers to generate highly context-specific insights into the features and dynamics of socio-technical phenomena. We suggest how IS researchers can use digital trace data to develop situated explanations, that is, explanations that capture the idiosyncratic features of real-world problems in order to generate impactful solutions to these problems. We outline five key principles to build situated explanations based on digital trace data. We make several suggestions on how the information system field can adjust its research and publication practices to embrace the development and dissemination of situated explanations.