I was born in South Africa; and I also hold German nationality from my father’s side.  I completed my undergraduate studies in financial management, Varsity College, South Africa. After which I worked as an Auditor. In 2019 I began my master’s degree. I completed my master’s in big data analytics at IESEG school management in Lille.

Combining my background in finance and economics with my master’s in data analytics placed me in a strong position to perform research. I worked as a research assistant during an internship which formed part of my masters at the Université Catholique de Lille. During this time, I used twitter data to build influencer networks, these networks were then used to identify the most significant influencers in the spheres of medicine, journalism, and civil society during the periods of lockdown in France. This experience led me to my PhD.

I am now a PhD candidate with LISIS, I am fortunate to be under the supervision of Dr Annick Vignes and Dr Bilel Benbouzid.

My PhD seeks to answer the following questions regarding the YouTube platform, what is the income of the creators on YouTube?  How is value sharing done? Is the platform more of a marketplace or an economy of sharing? What role does the recommendation system play in matching supply with demand? These are just a few of the questions that will be covered in my PhD.

The main objective of my PhD thesis is to answer the proposed research questions while considering YouTube in the context of a socio-economy of audio-visual content.

The context of the platform is envisaged as a market in which entry costs can be considered as zero, the channels build their reputation through different modes of financing according to their own characteristics, their own speciality themes, the form of their fans, brand and collaborator networks and the support of the recommendation system.

The results of this research should provide an inventory of methods for financing a YouTube channel. Furthermore, creating a means by which to forecast the evolution of this ecosystem, with a focus between market logic and crowd funding dynamics.