Web Scraping as a Method of Data Extraction in Sociological Studies: On Scientific Applicability

The article is devoted to a modern method of data extraction from the Web, web scraping, and its scientific significance 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. Co m parison with conventional sociological methods, such as survey, in-depth interview or focus group, which lack response rates and have semantic distortions, holds prospects for web scraping as for a method that enables information extraction towards entire population in a timely and structured manner. According to sociology and the philosophy of science, the research aims to determine a place for the method of web scraping in the structure of sociological and scientific knowledge. By alleging to theories of scientific revolutions, science of synergies and the Vienna Circle ideas, the present study tries to prove that,