Socio-materiality of entrepreneurship. Digital spaces are not only facilitators of social interactions but actively shape the nature of entrepreneurial activity (Nambisan, 2017). As entrepreneurs navigate these digital spaces, behaviors, decisions, and entrepreneurial strategies are not solely driven by individual agency or social constructs but are profoundly influenced by these spaces’ material nature (Leonardi, 2013). Digital design, features, and affordances can direct, amplify, or even stifle certain exchanges (Leonardi, 2011), thereby co-constructing entrepreneurial possibilities and outcomes (Meurer et al., 2022; Nambisan, 2017). For instance, a platform’s recommendation algorithm might influence the kind of feedback an entrepreneur receives or the audiences they reach. This is not merely a technical matter; it has profound socio-material implications. The algorithm’s design (material) can privilege certain kinds of interactions or ideas (social), thereby co-creating the entrepreneurial trajectory. Therefore, my research aims to unravel the socio-materiality of entrepreneurship, examining how entrepreneurs use digital spaces and how these spaces, with their materiality, co-shape entrepreneurial processes, and outcomes. Such an approach does not just seek to understand digital spaces as passive tools but recognizes them as active actors entangled in the complex interactions of entrepreneurs in digital spaces (Meurer et al., 2022; Schou et al., 2022).

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Why studying the socio-materiality of social entrepreneurship is particularly important: Social entrepreneurship aims to address and solve complex societal challenges, ranging from poverty to environmental degradation (George et al., 2016; Wiklund et al., 2019). These challenges are inherently socio-material in nature. For example, addressing a lack of access to clean water involves both social elements (community engagement, behavioral change) and material elements (water purification technology, infrastructure). Understanding their interplay can lead to more effective solutions.