Zine-culture as a practice of formation of social micro-identity

The article discusses the zine-culture before the era of Web 2.0. The word "Zine" comes from the abbreviation "magazine" or "fanzine" ("fan magazine"). In the Russian language and a number of other European languages, the word came into use in the tracing variant. At the heart of the creation of zine is DIY ethics ("Do-it-yourself"). Zines are non-commercial, nonprofessional journals with small circulation, which their creators create, publish and distribute by themselves. The practice of creating zines has roots in the fan community. In the late 1970s, the punk subculture adopted aesthetics and DIY techniques and created their own zines. Zines was created by punks for punks and covered many topics related to various social issues, music, including the genre of interviews with musicians, review articles on new music tracks and albums, and concerts. All this indicated activity and critical thinking, since it involved the reader in the creative process, provoking reflection, oppose passivity and thoughtless perception in the dominant culture. The production process of zines is a non-hierarchical network space without strictly regulated rules and roles that are collectively defined in the production process only by the producers themselves and those who interact with them. Just as the type of Zines indicates the lack of professional skills and methods of the creators, the context and culture in which they are created emphasizes the importance of the fact that Zines are formed and edited by all participants in the process, and not only by those with skills knowledge and cultural capital that are so important in professional publishing and the press. The network within the subculture allows you to define reader access to zines. This allows achieving safety and gives to zine-makers more freedom to speak about their personal lives, knowing that their self-disclosure will remain inaccessible to a wide audience. Thus, the network that has emerged in the zine-culture environment creates and supports a community and space in which often marginalized groups (feminists, sexual minorities, anarchists, or any other marginal group) are able to exchange experiences, ideas and resources. Thus, the lack of regulation of actions and condemnation from the community as a factor of external control - on the one hand, and the ability to regulate the accessibility of the readership to their zine - on the other, make the practice of zine-making free space for communicating like-minded people and productive expression of individuality, which as a result, it determines the features of the mi-crosocial identity of the subjects of the zine-culture.

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