Yana Degroote

Biography

Yana Degroote obtained her master’s degree in Communication Sciences, with a specialization in communication management, at the University of Ghent in 2024. She wrote her master’s thesis on the representation of materialistic values in kidfluencer YouTube videos. 

During her master’s degree, Yana did an internship at CEPEC to discover the world of academics and further develop her skills as a researcher. As an intern, she wrote a FWO research project proposal and worked on the SUNRISE project for cancer prevention.

In line with her master’s thesis, Yana started on the FWO runner-up KIDFLUENCER project in august 2024, which focuses on investigating the kidfluencer phenomenon. Her role in the project is to explore the audience of kidfluencers, children who consume kidfluencer content. More specifically, she wants to know which kidfluencers are followed by the Flemish child audience, to understand the children’s motivations to follow these kidfluencers, and to explore whether and how kidfluencers play a role in the consumer socialization of these children. To do so, Yana will mostly conduct ethnographic research.