The methods used in this research are twofold. Firstly, information on the process of writing fanzines and the views of those producing them was gathered directly from zine producers and secondly, information on zine content and layout was gained through the examination of individual fanzines.

In order to gain information from zine writers and publishers, I designed a questionnaire that could be sent out, whether by post or email, that could then be filled in at the recipient's leisure. This would be particularly suited to my research aims as I wanted people to give answers that really reflected their feelings on fanzines, and I also wanted to get information from a wide variety of sources. By sending out a questionnaire, I was able to send it to any number of fanzine writers that I wanted (often at the same time as asking for a copy of their zine) and then process their information as I received it.

The structure of the questionnaire was quite important in order to gain the information that I required. This was partly because of the wide focus of my dissertation; any particular question could give an answer that would be beneficial to understanding the workings of fanzines and their writers. I therefore used a variety of questions, starting with personal information and the amount of time the person had been producing fanzines, and then moving onto wider questions, such as the writer's view of the mainstream media, whether their fanzine has a website, and what they think the future for paper fanzines might be.

The questions included in the questionnaire can be found in appendix A of this dissertation.

I sent the questionnaire to all the fanzines that I acquired, which are each listed in appendix B. The fanzines used in this dissertation were obtained from primarily two sources; music shops and reviews in other fanzines. When I set about trying to get hold of as many and as varied a number of fanzines as I could, this was proved easier by all fanzines writers being aware of numerous other people creating similar publications and who I would be able to contact.

My initial aim was to obtain as many examples of different types of fanzines as possible in order to be able to make observations across all the different genres of music zine publications by comparison. This did however prove more problematic than I had at first thought. The problem here however was not a lack of different types of zine, but a colossal amount of types. Fanzines are created in such a personal way that each one can be seen to be a genre of its own. However, using the rough genre distinction of the type of music covered, I did manage to obtain a collection of fanzines covering many different types of music, from pop to metal. The problem in making these sorts of distinctions do however lie in many fanzines covering such wide music areas in any one issue, according to the interests of the writer.

Fanzines are an area of publishing that is extremely difficult to refer to in terms that are not qualitative. As their publication is wholly undertaken by people who are not 'professional' publishers and writers in any way, people who are often learning what to do as they do it, it is necessary to understand the thoughts and feelings of the producers at the same time as looking at the publications themselves, which is what I will attempt to do in this dissertation.