Purpose - This paper seeks to provide insights into the process of applying Lamb & Kling's user as social actor model as an institutional lens to analyse data and to generate findings of IS practice. Design/methodology/approach - The paper provides an example from a recently published research project why the social actor model was chosen, and an application of how the model was operationalised in data collection and analysis. Findings - The paper provides two illustrations of theorising the social actor model at different levels: at an elementary level by using instantiation to map the model's constructs to a match in the transcript text; and at a higher level where the model enabled the paper to tie together a number of individual phenomena to construct a broader higher-level schema. Originality/value - As the social actor model is relatively new, and few guidelines or examples exist, the paper provides rich insights into the difficulties with the application of this model and a solution for coping with these so that other researchers can read of an example that may be similar to their own and therefore guide their work.