Ranges of bimodule projections and reflexivity

We develop a general framework for reflexivity in dual Banach spaces, motivated by the question of when the weak⁎ closed linear span of two reflexive masa-bimodules is automatically reflexive. We establish an affirmative answer to this question in a number of cases by examining two new classes of masa-bimodules, defined in terms of ranges of masa-bimodule projections. We give a number of corollaries of our results concerning operator and spectral synthesis, and show that the classes of masa-bimodules we study are operator synthetic if and only if they are strong operator Ditkin.