Assignment #3: tournament media choices

For this assignment I decided to analyze a few interactions I had with teammates at an away tournament for my club sports team. Despite the fact that all 30 or so girls who travelled with the team all get along, there are a few cliques that inevitably form among the group. When I heard the assignment would be to analyze some social interactions I thought a travelling weekend with my teammates would be the perfect opportunity to pick out some interesting examples, because on the field, the 30 of us are one conhesive unit, while off the field this union does not necessarily hold true.


As teammates on the field together, all preheld judgements of looks, personality, or social status are ignored. This social atmosphere allows for very different interactions to be considered appropriate. A specific example that I was able to pinpoint was a moment where one of my teammates who I don't get along with at all in a social atmosphere scored for our team to tie the game. Despite my negative sentiments towards her personality, I ran across the field and jumped on her in congratulation. Obviously, I chose face-to-face, even body-to-body interaction to praise her positive effect on the team. However, later in the night, after the game had finished, we had changed into our evening clothes, and were getting ready to go out in a social situation, my feelings and social interactions with the very same person were entirely different. Among the team, my few close friends and I made plans to go out to specific bars. As a group, none of us can get along in a social setting with the tie-scoring teammate who we had so graciously congratulated only hours before. The question of how to avoid bringing her along became a debate among us. "Who's going to tell her?" "How are we going to say it?" In the end, I took the responsibility for the job, and decided that the best way to break it to her would be to tell a little white lie through a very lean channel (aka text message) that would not allow her to see my expression, distaste, or true feeing on the matter. Although this may be seen as immature, we concluded that it was simply the best way to handle the situation without affecting the team atmosphere.

Upon further analysis of these two interactions with the same individual I believe that both interactions strongly supported O'Sullivan's Media Richness Theory. In the first situation, I chose a very rich medium to communicate with a teammate. The situation was extremely emotionally charged (high valence) and despite the locus being outside myself, it had a direct effect on me personally so I had a desire to express my sentiments in a strong and clear manner. Running half way across the field when I was exhausted was not necessarily the most efficient social interaction I could have chosen, but according to O'Sullivan's theory the efficiency isn't the only factor taken into account when choosing a medium of interaction. In this instance I chose excitement and clarity over efficiency. The latter of my two interactions, despite being exactly opposite to the on-the-field example, also clearly supports the Media Richness Theory. The valence of the situation was quite strong- my close friends and I had strong feelings of wanting avoid the individual in a social situation. However it was a stronly negative feeling, and the locus was outside myself. Following O'Sullivan's hypothesis 1, I greatly prefered a mediated method of communication as it created a buffer that allowed me to avoid any hurtful or awkward situations. The choice of debating the issue with my friends, and carefully crafting the perfect little white lie certainly wasn't the most efficient medium to express our thought. However, it did allow us to hind behind the ambiguity of the method of communication to avoid an uncomfortable situation.