Human--machine collaboration exhibits remarkable potential in addressing complex societal challenges and fostering social innovation. Current research predominantly adopts a binary opposition between human actors and technological artifacts, which proves inadequate in comprehending human-machine interaction dynamics. To transcend this limitation, this study introduces the theoretical lens of human-machine entanglement, analyzing the interaction mechanisms between digital citizens and digital artifacts, and investigating how human-machine collaboration drives digital social innovation. Through cases of digital social innovation in China's emergency management context, this study employs grounded theory to identify four fundamental mechanisms: human-machine perception synchronization, knowledge linkage, strategy integration, and cross-boundary collaboration. The findings reveal that digital citizens and digital artifacts progress through stages of digital resource deep identification, pairing and connection, strategic structuring, and cross-boundary attribution in their collaborative advancement of social innovation. This study enriches the theoretical framework of human-machine collaboration and digital social innovation while providing actionable insights for leveraging human-machine collaboration in social innovation initiatives, demonstrating both theoretical and practical significance.
