Media selection 1
Friday afternoon, when I realized that I hadn’t made any weekend plans except for writing a blog post for info 245, I decided to go to a movie. So I called my friend Heidi, and asked her if she wanted to go to a movie with me later. “Yeah, sure. Call me after you finish classes.” she said. So after all my classes, I called her again, and she was at home and ready to go. We met up at the bus station and went to the theater together. We chatted about our classes and complained about boys…having a very good time.
Media selection 2
After I got out of the theater, I found that I had two missed calls and a voice mail. They are all from another friend of mine. I am not really familiar with this guy. We met last semester in a house party and facebook message each other for several times. He called me on Monday asking if I wanted to hang out with him sometime, I missed his call and totally forgot to call back. This time he also left me a voice mail asking if I kept ignoring him for some reason, sounds kinda angry…
Frankly I was not really interested, but I felt badly acting rude. So I decided to facebook message him, apologize for not calling back and B.S about how busy I have been lately…
Media Richness Theory & O’Sullivan’s model
I sense my choices about media can be better explained under a mix of Media Richness Theory and O’Sullivan’s model.
In the first case, I chose rich media as telephone and FtF to catch up with my friends, because it is an ambiguous task and not in bad need of efficiency. This matches the Media Richness Theory, which suggests that people will choose media with different richness according to the equivocality of a communication task. People choose rich media for more equivocal tasks and lean media for less equivocal tasks.In the second case, I chose the media because I felt bad about not calling back. O’Sullivan’s model suggested that people’s media selections are influenced by two factors: locus (whether it’s about us or others) and the valence (whether the behavior is negative or positive). My locus is”me” and the valence is “negative”, and therefore I chose mediated media as Facebook message even though he used telephone and voicemail to communicate with me.
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4 comments:
I agree catching up with friends on the phone could be thought of as the Media Richness Theory, but it also fits the O'Sullivan theory. The locus is others and the valence is positive. Thus, you chose a richer media to communicate with your friends. Also, setting up a time to watch a movie is an unequivocal task, which you did through a richer media: the phone. This does not follow the Media Richness Theory.
The second portion of your example follows the O'Sullivan theory, which you pointed out.
It is interesting that while most of the blogs are based on and follow the Media Richness Theory, your experiences can be traced along the O'Sullivan theory. In this sense, it is definitely hard to distinguish which theory is "more correct".
I agree with Jennifer, your experiences in both cases seem to closely follow the O'Sullivan theory better. Media Richness Theory states that we will choose to use leaner media to perform unequivocal tasks, but you seemed to do just the opposite in the case of calling your friend. It would seem that the O'Sullivan theory applies better because you used a rich media to contact a friend. This accounts for the fact that the valence was positive and therefore you chose a richer media.
I agree with you about the second part of your blog in which you used Facebook to contact this person. The O'Sullivan theory perfectly matches up to your approach.
First of all, well done. This is a perfect example to relate to the theories we have been exploring in class. In the later part of your blog when you choose a leaner media to contact the person you dont really want to talk to, this fits the O'Sullivan theory perfectly. However I do have to agree with the others that the first part seems more to me like it matches up with the O'Sullivan theory as well. In this case I think the phone call was a choice of richer media. Isn't it funny that we do exactly what the O'Sullivan theory points out on a daily basis. Whenever we really dont want to speak to a person we have numerous other forms of CMC at our disposal!
Hi Yu Tian,
In agreement with what others have already stated, good job on the blog. Your situations really relate to the issues and concepts we’ve been discussing in class regarding methods of communications and why we choose certain methods over others. I agree with others: though certain aspects may relate to the Media Richness Theory, both of your examples clearly align with O’Sullivan theory. I feel that you chose to use the rich media of the telephone to contact your friend because you have a better connection and understand with you friend. The telephone allows you to be more personal and exchange vocal cues (reflecting tone and attitude), whereas many CMCs do not allow you to do so. The situation regarding the not-so-close guy friend is a great contrasting example because you chose to resort to using CMC instead of calling him on the telephone and interacting vocally. Perhaps you chose to contact him via facebook not only because you are not all that close with the guy, but because you were not sure of his reactions. If you were to speak with him on the phone you may have been subjected to a negative tone and a rude attitude. However, by using CMC you avoid dealing with vocal and visual reactions.
Overall, good job providing support for both theories and supporting the notion that methods of communication are situational and circumstantial!
-Joshua Navarro
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