**4.4 Impact on funding and investment**

Participants believe that YouTube's algorithmic bias can affect their ability to attract funding and investment for their film projects. They perceive that investors may be more inclined to support content that has already gained visibility and popularity on YouTube, making it challenging for emerging filmmakers to secure financial support. This bias can hinder the growth and development of the Botswana film industry as a whole. A participant echoed the following sentiments:

*"Another issue that we have to battle with in Botswana is the lack of investors in the film. Essentially, investors are attracted by the number of views. Currently, Botswana Television (Btv) does not provide that platform, but YouTube does. This ultimately means that it would be easier to get funds, because you may ask a security company to sponsor a scene where security services are featured. So, the views determine the exposure of that particular security company, if their uniform was to appear in that scene. Taking the example of Hollywood, there are product placement incentives, but, as a filmmaker, with a YouTube account that has the numbers, it is easy for investors to invest in your account because they know that they are going to benefit in numbers because their products are going to be visible. So, that's one thing that can help us. Also, when we look at our industry in Botswana, we only have one market, which is our local channels. Btv advertises tenders once a year. So, if we have a YouTube channel, then it would help us to make money and eventually close the existing gap in our industry."*

All the themes discussed above were unevenly distributed across participants' responses to research question 1, as shown in **Figure 1**.

**Figure 1.** *Distribution of themes from participants' responses to research question 1.*
