Research
Practice informs
the questions.
Hendrik's research sits at the intersection of media studies, digital culture, and the political economy of creative labour. He studies what he knows from the inside — the realities of independent media production in a platform-dominated world, and what they reveal about who the digital economy actually serves.
Current Research
This study examines how independent podcasters in South Africa generate economic value and revenue within platformised infrastructures — and why being fully included in global platform ecosystems does not mean benefiting equally from them.
The research is grounded in the concept of adverse digital incorporation: the condition in which inclusion within a digital system produces unequal or adverse outcomes for those included. South African podcasters publish on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube. They use the same hosting services, analytics dashboards, and monetisation tools as creators in the United States or United Kingdom. Their inclusion is real. What this research investigates is the mechanism through which that inclusion nonetheless produces and sustains inequality — participants produce, cultivate audiences, and the system extracts value from that participation whilst returning disproportionately little.
The study focuses on members of the South African Podcasters Guild (SAPG), examining how monetisation strategies are pursued, combined, and constrained across different creator types — from independent part-time podcasters to studios, broadcasters, and hosting platforms — within a local context shaped by infrastructure inequality, a small advertising market, payment system barriers, and a media history that global platform models were not designed to serve.
Research Questions
-
PQ
How does adverse digital incorporation shape podcast monetisation among SAPG members, and what does the South African case reveal about the limits of Global North frameworks for understanding creator economies in the Global South?
-
RQ1
What structural constraints — including infrastructure barriers, algorithmic governance, payment systems, and advertising market conditions — do SAPG members face, and how do these interact to shape monetisation practices in practice?
-
RQ2
How do SAPG members navigate these constraints in practice, and where does value continue to leak from the system despite their efforts to capture it?
-
RQ3
How does adverse digital incorporation manifest differently across distinct member types, and what does this variation reveal about the relationship between structural position and monetisation outcome?
-
RQ4
What does the SAPG's evolution from a community of practice toward an organisation with collective advocacy functions reveal about how independent podcast creators navigate structural constraints that individual strategies alone cannot address?
Key Theoretical Concepts
Inclusion within a digital platform system that produces unequal or adverse outcomes for those included. The study's primary analytical framework, drawn from Heeks (2022).
The process by which cultural production becomes embedded within and governed by digital platform ecosystems, with platforms exercising increasing control over distribution, discovery, and monetisation.
Podcast production framed as work rather than hobby — including the extensive unpaid and speculative labour of audience cultivation, platform optimisation, and monetisation experimentation.
How economic structures, institutional arrangements, and power relations shape cultural production and distribution — directing attention away from individual success narratives toward systemic conditions.
The distinction between the generation of value by creators and the capture of revenue by platforms or intermediaries — examining where monetisation succeeds, where it fails, and where value leaks.
South African podcasting as a case study in how Global North platform models produce structurally different outcomes in contexts of infrastructure inequality, small advertising markets, and payment system barriers.
Previous Academic Work
Research conducted into online radio in South Africa, undertaken from within GaySA Radio where Hendrik served as Station Manager. An early example of the practitioner-researcher approach that continues to characterise his work — studying the field from the inside, with full access to the operational realities that purely external researchers cannot access.
Academic Publications
-
2021
R@dio in South Africa: An Exploratory Study
-
2010
Same-Sex Sexuality in the North-West Province: Community Report on the Outcomes of a Research Project
For academic correspondence, conference invitations, or research collaboration enquiries, use the contact form.