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К вопросу о научной осмысленности применения веб-скрейпинга как метода сбора данных в социологических исследованиях
The article is dedicated to modern method of data extraction from the Web, which is called web-scraping, and its scientific meaningfulness and applicability in sociological studies. Based on trends across empirical sociological studies, concepts of digital sociology, science and technology studies (STS), computational sociology and issues raised at recent international committees’ meetings, the current research gives a definition of web-scraping and presents an overview of its both methodological and technical opportunities, challenges and limitations. Advantages and shortcomings are classified across a set of methodological, technical, judicial, ethic, financial and professional issues and can serve as a perfect framework to be referenced to while weighing risks and rewards at the stage of research design. Comparison with conventional sociological methods, such as survey, in-depth interview or focus group, lacking in response rates and semantic distortions, holds prospects for web-scraping as for a method that enables extraction information towards entire population in a timely and structured manner. According to sociology and philosophy of science, the research aims to define a place for method of web-scraping in the structure of sociological and scientific knowledge. By alleging to theories of scientific revolutions, science of synergies and Vienne Circle ideas, the present study tries to prove that under the circumstances of shifting reality the scientific knowledge correspondently transforms, and research questions imposed to the relevance and scientific meaningfulness of new theory and new methods are extremely prompt and expose necessity of methodology conceptualization. This research is designated to overcome the stigmatization around studies, which informational base is mainly constituted by web-platform data. Dealing with online platforms, web-scraping is successfully imbedded into digital sociology and has potential in enlightening the platform economics. This article urges modern sociologists not to be frightened of learning new instruments and turning their research into interdisciplinary sociological studies. Web-scraping benefits interdisciplinary research at the expense of its ability in simplification of scientific verification processes.