The Distortion Paradox

9 The Numbers of the Beast Surveying Iron Maiden’s Global Tribe1 Jean-Philippe Ury-Petesch In Les Nouvelles Tribus Urbaines (1999), Valérie Fournier argues that most of the contemporary examples of youth tribes or subcultural ‘styles’ are iden- tified by their relationship to music genres. This chapter will focus attention on the Iron Maiden tribe, who can be considered a representative segment of the global heavy metal tribus, who were encountered via an Internet survey carried out between December 2007 and July 2009. Over four thousand (4,456) computer literate Maiden fans, from 70 countries, answered the 135 questions that made up the ‘Ironthesis’ on-line questionnaire survey, in this period. Accordingly, the aims of this chapter are threefold. First, to describe how this global survey was conceived and conducted, paying attention to the issues of gathering large social data sets via the Internet and, in particular, how to overcome geographical and language barriers, so that the survey could be as representative as possible. Second, to describe and illustrate the global scale of the survey in terms of the number of fans that participated, their nationalities, and their countries of residence. Third, to record the social morphology of these fans, in terms of age, gender, residence, education, employment, social background, marital status, religious beliefs, political affiliation, and so on and to discuss this data in relation to previous national and regional survey findings and debates about heavy metal fandom, particularly but not exclusively in France, Germany, and North America. Ironthesis: Seven Languages to Speak to Maiden Fans around the World In this section, we discuss the target population we wished to survey, the writing of the questionnaire itself, and the process of developing the e-version (including the host website where it would be made available), in relation to existing heavy metal research and debates about social science methodologies. Qualitative researchers generally prefer to be in close or direct con- tact with the populations they study, especially when they are employing observational methods or conducting interviews. One of the consequences of this is that participant sample sizes are often quite small, are derived DOI: 10.4324/9781315742816-12 146 Jean-Philippe Ury-Petesch from particular geographical areas and economic, social, and cultural groups. The advantages of such methods are that they can gather rich and possibly important or insightful data. The disadvantages are that this data is small and may not be representative of the target population or group the research is trying to investigate. Quantitative methods, particularly social surveys involving structured questionnaires, do not have these limitations, as a wide sample of respondents can be reached, traditionally by post or through door-to-door surveys. However, such research-at-a- distance needs to have a very clear idea of the target survey population it wants to gather data about and how a sample can be gathered from the group that can be viewed as representative, i.e., that will reflect in proportion the key features or characteristics of the larger population of which it is a part. Previous research into heavy metal has been divided very much along these traditional lines of qualitative (small) and quantitative (big) data gathering studies (see Brown, this volume). For example, almost all of the studies conducted in Britain in the 1970s and North America in the 1980s, with mainly school and college students, have been quantitative (questionnaire surveys sometimes correlated with sample interviews). Indeed the predom- inant or at least most well-known social and cultural profile of the ‘typical metalhead’ is one largely derived from these data sets (although studies conducted in Europe, mainly in France and Germany, have widened this picture somewhat, as we will discuss). By contrast, the majority of contemporary research into metal fandom, such as the many studies reported in Metal Rules the Globe (Wallach, Berger, and Green, 2011) are qualitative, often ethnographic in nature or based on a small group of interviewees who are assumed to be representative in some key respects of the wider population of metal fans of that country or region or internationally. Limits and Bias of the Approach Fournier, in her study, notes that: ‘In order to approach a field like this, participant observation seems the best method. A questionnaire-based survey turns out to be impossible in an environment where liberal professions are not well represented, research work coming from a university organ arouses little interest, or even suspicion’ (1999, p. 13).2 With a questionnaire, we fail to follow one of the main teachings of anthropology: knowing how to watch and to listen while remaining as neutral as possible. If, as Hein (2003) and Walzer (2007) claim in respect to France, metalheads are educated and qualified people, we thought it likely they would be inclined to take part; across the Atlantic, as Weinstein (2000, pp. 113–117) indicates, they are more likely to be ‘blue collar’ or proletarian (see also Brown, this volume). However, Le Bart (2000) speaks of how fans want to talk about their passion and let other people know about it. So, we were optimistic fans would participate. The Numbers of the Beast 147 The beaconing by the investigator is also another problem, as the questions he asks go in the direction of confirming or invalidating his/her hypotheses. By only asking about what interests him, thanks to a closed questionnaire, he deprives himself of an interesting exchange with the population studied; the latter could help him to go beyond his prejudice. Nevertheless, the social morphology of a group is based on elements that do not require a direct exchange between the investigator and the population studied. The lack of qualitative data compared to quantitative data is a major limit of a multiple-choice questionnaire as it deprives the investigator of the transcrip- tion of what Hennion (2007) would call the ‘words of passion’. But there is no perfect method at the level of a sole researcher because both methods present pros and cons. The imperfection of a multiple choice question survey appears at two levels: the questions and the suggested answers. One of the main faults, indeed the most common one, is when meaningful questions are missing. For example, we did not ask the Maiden fans about their haircuts when clearly long hair is part of the metal bricolage. The way questions are formulated also generates problems as each person has a different sensibility that can lead to misun- derstanding. And when the survey is conducted on a global scale, the lack of knowledge of other cultures inevitably leads to ethnocentric questions that do not make sense for people coming from a different cultural substratum. The same remark applies for answers that sometimes do not correspond to the life and the experience of the polled people. The lack of choice is the other main problem: either options have been omitted or they are too limited and do not enable the polled people to give a satisfactory answer. The possibility of skipping the question is also an option in case of no suitable answer. The length of the questionnaire can also be a factor if potential respondents think that their time could be spent on something more entertaining or immediate in reward. With a long questionnaire, one can be quite sure that some respondents will be lost along the way. Also, the anonymity of the Internet is a double-edged sword because either the respondent feels per- fectly at ease, therefore trustful, and will honestly answer all the questions, even the sensitive ones about religious beliefs, political affiliation, etc,. or he can be a total mythomaniac inventing a false or fake persona. A lengthy questionnaire can therefore be a good tool to discourage the second type of response; only ‘die-hard’ fans will be willing to spend up to half an hour on something that does not bring them instant reward. In addi- tion, we forewarned potential participants of our right to delete questionnaire returns that looked doubtful in their veracity. Using an online survey also raises the question of the representativeness of the sample. It is extremely difficult, not to say impossible, to determine the representativeness of an Internet-derived sample. However, gaining an exceptionally high number of returns does offer validity in terms of the sheer number of respondents. Despite this, we do not know how many fans found the link to the questionnaire but did not complete it. 148 Jean-Philippe Ury-Petesch Population Studied Unlike many studies that are geographically limited, we wanted to reach as many countries and nationalities as possible. A conventional postal or paper survey would simply not have made this possible.3 The Internet appeared to be the best tool for our purposes, even if its use introduced a first bias or lim- itation in gathering our sample: the survey would only be able to reach computer-literate fans, those with access to the Internet, or fans with friends ready to assist them in answering the survey. Despite the persistence of the ‘digital divide’ in global Internet access, from the late ’90s the use of Internet technolo- gies has grown exponentially, and so we were reasonably confident we would be able to reach a wide fan base and age range, between 12 and 55 years. Despite the fact that Iron Maiden is a British band, coming to promi- nence as one of the leading bands of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) in the mid-1980s, the success of the band’s records and con- certs has led to world tours and a global fan following.

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