Per un’epistemologia del digitale: note sull’uso di big data e computazione nella ricerca sociale

The attention paid to the impact of big data and computation on the tool-kit of social scientists has not been matched by an equivalent interest in the many epistemological questions that these digital methods evoke. Here we propose a series of epistemological warnings about the limits of the scientific knowledge produced through digital methods, and we closely examine how these methods change the relationships between subject and object, data and theory, methods and data. In order to support an active commitment by social scientists to explore the digital dimension of social inquiry, it is critical to adopt a methodological posture that is able to elaborate research designs with and against the digital, trying to exploit what digital techniques can provide as an added value, while testing their reliability with regard to other techniques, including the qualitative ones.