Text Sample:Chapter 3.2, Research Design:To find a sample from the vast field of printed as well as online issues of football fanzines was one of the toughest challenges faced during the conduct of the study. For that reason printed issues of football fanzines were the preferred choice for this study. To underline the problem of finding a suitable sample, an example will highlight the problem: There are 92 clubs in the English Football League, including the Premier League, the Championship and Divisions One and Two. Presumably each of them has at least one fanzine, thus there would be 92 fanzines to examine. This example focuses on the Football League clubs only and excludes those clubs playing below this level such as Gravesend&Northfleet and Welling United. Clubs such as Manchester United might even have more than the one fanzine that other clubs might have and it can be assumed that other clubs, not all, in the Premier League, the Championship and all other divisions of the Football League also have more than one fanzine published alongside the official match day programme, which makes it difficult to grasp the whole field of football fanzines. Match day programmes are published for each home match no matter if it is a cup game or a league match whereas fanzines are issued on a monthly or a bimonthly basis.

To round up on that example: there are at least 92 fanzines each month or every second month depending on the publisher(s) of the fanzine. This does not include the online versions of fanzines which might differ from the printed ones and there are fanzines that are published online only. This dissertation examines printed issues of football fanzines only. This example gives an idea of the huge field the fanzines represent. The spread of the internet was not apparent in the early and mid-1990s but has become one of the major platforms for fans to publish their opinions. Although being a huge success the internet could not stop fanzines from being printed. The Nottingham fanzine Lost That Loving Feeling for example went the other way. It started as an internet-based fanzine and in 2005 the fanzine went into print.

Although it was possible to get a hold onto a number of copies of fanzines via eBay, the Black Cat bookshop in Leicester and one bookshop in Manchester of which the name has got lost, it was not possible to get a huge stock of fanzines of about 300 or 500 issues, but only 67. The sampling frame includes these 67 issues of fanzines, including the biggest English national fanzine When Saturday Comes, a whole set of issues of Nottingham Forest''s Lost That Loving Feeling from the 2005/06 season, all issues of Leicester City''s The Fox from 2006 as well as a season''s coverage of Arsenal''s One Nil Down- Two One Up from the season 1997/98. The approach was to focus solely on England but also to cover the most of England in geographical and in footballing terms, ergo fanzines from the South-West as well as the North-East were sought for as was for fanzines from the London-based clubs, the Midlands and the Liverpool-Manchester area. This seems to have been accomplished successfully as the sample shows. It became more difficult to report on all leagues, conferences and divisions of English football. Therefore having fanzines from small clubs such as Welling United FC and Gravesend&Northfleet FC at hand - both issues of fanzines are issued at a time when both clubs were playing below league level in their regional divisions - proves to be helpful for a wider and more sophisticated analysis. To have a complete study the sample was divided into two parts. The first part contains fanzines that were published in the 1990s while the second part focuses on those published from 2000 onwards.

This allows comparing and contrasting the development of fanzines in terms of cultures of memory. Also conclusions can be drawn about the publishing quality of the fanzines. A point where the fanzines published after 2000 might lacking depth is that this part of the sample does not include any fanzines from clubs such as Welling United, Gravesend&Northfleet but instead concentrate on the upper tiers of the Football League such as the Premier League, the Championship and the First Division.The number of issues of fanzines was limited in that respect that both parts of the sample should be equal in size but no club should be represented twice in each part of the sample. On the other hand it was considered to be helpful to compare issues of fanzines from one club over the time span of ten or more years. This was only possible for clubs such as Manchester United, Newcastle United and Sunderland AFC and their respective fanzines. Therefore the findings might vary within each of part of the sample but nonetheless will be helpful for any conclusions that might be drawn from the findings. The second part, that contains fanzines published after 2000, is smaller in numbers making the sample imbalanced but nonetheless still worth studying.

Therefore, it can be concluded that the strategy that was used for sampling is a stratified sampling strategy. This strategy demands a certain amount of knowledge of the field that is to be studied. Also, the divisions that the sample was divided into, that means subpopulations or strata (Krippendorf, 2004:115), such as the geographical regions of England or the divisions of the Football League. Further, even the clubs represent strata in the sample. In the analysis each fanzine is examined and for each category that is found in ist content a 1 is typed into the according column of the table. If no such category can be found then there will be a 0.A note on bias must be made here. As football fanzines are independently produced by football fans and their approach is to provide an alternative view of the game and the running of the clubs, then bias in their reporting must be taken into account as their point of view might differ massively from that of the clubs and official reporting on matches and club affairs.

Also, the points brought forward earlier in this chapter on the choice of categories and the selection of recording units are subject of error as the definition of them may differ from what is seen as a category for memory by others. The same has to be said about the author; as this topic is of personal interest, certain subjectivity has to be dealt with. This is in accordance with Norbert Elias'' statement that objective research is not possible in the social sciences. He argues that research should aim to be value detached and that this process is advanced if the researcher has a personal interest in the subject. Not only that, but also no researcher can claim he is detached from society, culture and environment that is surrounding him or her. Only children and the insane are according to Elias. Therefore, as detachment is not possible to one hundred per cent, involvement is attempted to be kept at a minimum (Mennell, Goudsblom, 1998:217-248).