Underground publishing from photocopy to digital: A genealogical analysis on fanzine subculture in Türkiye

This thesis analyses fanzines, which were reproduced by various copying techniques, especially photocopying, and distributed in a limited way. The first fanzines, produced by science fiction fans who could not find a place for themselves in the mainstream media, merged with the punk music movement and became a counter-cultural move. This study, which examines fanzines as the communication network of subcultures, investigated a youth movement experienced from the places of distribution to communication processes in an artistic, political and cultural context, and examined fanzines in many contexts such as forms of communication and interaction, daily life and reproducibility, political economy, commodification and its position in the age of digital production. In this sense, while the methodological framework of the research is qualitative, inductive and interpretative, the possibilities of the auto-ethnographic method have been utilised to a great extent in order to make the personal experiences of the researcher a part of the process. In this respect, document analysis and field research were carried out through a typological modelling. While the documents in the research span a wide historical range from Türkiye's first punk fanzines to current period publications, in-depth interviews were conducted with the zinesters who published these works in the field research. In order to ensure the validity and reliability of the research, multiple data method was preferred in a participatory way, while expert opinions were used in the data analysis phase. In order to make sense of fanzines, which are subjected to a critical evaluation from their design forms to the way they process events and phenomena, the interviews with fanzine publishers have been supportive in the study, which reveals their transformation from photocopying to the digital phase. The research has tried to reflect the fanzine experience in Türkiye from an insider's point of view, and by scrutinising the first contact with these radical works, it has brought the enthusiasm of desire and production to the forefront. In the thesis, in which a cultural and political analysis of the evolution from an anti-system to a popular commodity is made, the place of fanzines in the age of digital production is evaluated through a collective network, through the eyes of the producers, and in this way, it is underlined that the fact that it remains anonymous by nature is important in terms of not succumbing to the age within it. In a time when digital culture paradoxically turns individuals into producers with instant gratification and destroys the traditional fanzine cult, it is thought that this study, in which fanzines are discussed in many aspects, will make room for new dialogues in the literature.