ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses 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. It describes how the 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. The chapter illustrates the global scale of the survey in terms of the number of fans that participated, their nationalities, and their countries of residence. It records the social morphology of the fans, in terms of age, gender, residence, education, employment, social background, marital status, religious beliefs, political affiliation, and discusses 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.
