This past weekend, a number of important social interactions occurred in my life. For these interactions, it was necessary for me to decide which media I would like for them to occur through. The reasons for which I chose the medias through which these two social interactions would occur had very little to do with the ideas of the impression management model, but closely lined up with the concepts of the Media Richness Theory.
The Media Richness Theory states that people will choose a rich media for more equivocal tasks, and a less rich media for less equivocal tasks. Characteristics of a richer media are multiplicity of cues, availability of feedback, message personalization, and language variety. An example of a rich media is face to face communication, while an example of a less rich media is text messaging. The second part of the Media Richness Theory talks about the equivocalness of tasks. Equivocal refers to the ambiguity, or vagueness of a particular task. An equivocal undertaking would include hiring an employee, while a less equivocal task would be asking someone to meet you for lunch.
The first social interaction that I examined was highly equivocal. As I result of this, I decided to carry the task out in a very rich media, which was face to face communication. This weekend I told my parents something very important about an aspect of my life, an aspect which they were unaware of. Due to the vagueness and ambiguity of the task, as well as its highly emotional and personal nature, I thought it completely unreasonable and selfish to communicate the message through any media other than face to face. Ultimately the success of the social interaction depended on a number of things characteristic to rich medias. The cues given by them were very useful to me in telling how they felt, and what they were thinking. The reverse also holds true, as they used my cues to control and modify their actions and words as appropriate. Without the feedback that both sides of the interaction received, it would have been nearly impossible to address the concerns of everyone involved. Message personalization and language variety were also crucial in allowing me to adequately relay my sentiments and emotions to my parents, as well as for them to relay theirs to me. A rich media was necessary in this highly equivocal task to allow the social task to go smoothly, and to allow everyone involved to walk away feeling good about the interactions that had just occurred.
The second task was much less equivocal than the first task, and as a result I chose to communicate through a less rich media, a text message. The text message allowed me to cut out unnecessary cues and social exchanges, and allowed me to be efficient in asking my rather unambiguous question: "Want to meet for lunch?"
The Media Richness Theory not only accurately predicted the medias that I would choose for two tasks to occur through, but also predicted the reasons for which I would choose these two medias.
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I can definitely see how your interactions relate to the Media Richness Theory, but I also think that they fit very well with O’Sullivan’s model. For your first social interaction you talked about how you considered the ambiguity of the message and in order to make it clear and not as vague, you spoke to your parents face-to-face. It seems that in addition to efficiency, the vagueness of the message was also important in your media channel choice. It seems as though in many of our messages the Media Richness Theory and O’Sullivan’s Model are combined since we consider both efficiency and the content of the message when we choose a media channel.
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