Medibank’s Public Hospital Relationship Manager, Jeremy Weinstein, has recently become a Doctor after completing his PhD at Swinburne University late last month. He received his PhD in the field of Media and Communications, where his doctoral research focused on the collaborative nature of the internet examined through the lens of documentary video editing.
What made you decide to pursue a doctorate degree, and what particularly interested you about the field of media and communications?
Media and Communications have changed dramatically in the past decade, which is essentially how long social media has been around. Considering the iPhone is not even 10 years old yet it has had a profound impact on the way we communicate and will continue to into the foreseeable future. These ideas and issues fascinated me greatly and, entering the world of academia after a being a filmmaker for a dozen years, I wondered how filmmaking would be affected by these changes.
Can you tell us a bit about your doctoral research project?
My doctoral research focused on how people collaborate online, using a case study of documentary video editing. We built an online collaborative video editor and essentially tested whether people would make short films in the same way they make Wikipedia pages; open and collaboratively.
What was the result of your research?
Admittedly, my research yielded an unexpected result. People find it more difficult to collaborate online when the tasks are complex. Rather than engaging in deep problem solving, participants preferred to engage with the project by simply sharing content. I think this highlights that the internet is not a place for intricate problem solving but rather a place for people to collect and collate information and media on a particular topic.
How will your studies and research assist in your role at Medibank?
There are so many complimentary skills that one learns from doing a PhD, including: critical thinking, problem solving, researching and writing, all of which can be beneficial in any role. Furthermore, understanding the nature of collaboration, both offline and online, will be a useful skill in my role of engaging public hospitals for the purposes of developing mutually beneficial outcomes.
Here is Jeremy presenting his research at the Digital Leaders Summit.