Last semester, I lived in a house with 6 of my close friends. At the beginning of the year we had a house meeting to discuss living logistics. We talked about buying groceries, paying cable/internet bills, chores, etc. When it came to discussing how to keep our house clean, we all had slightly different opinions. Some of my friends were neat-freaks while others were more content with a ‘laissez-faire’ attitude when it came to things like vacuuming, cleaning dishes, and garbage. As for me, I fell into the neat-freak category. As you may suspect, this led to rising tensions within the house.
By the time the semester was in full swing, there were weeks where I would not see one of my roommates (I will call him RD) leading to piled up dirty dishes. RD is an extremely bright, over achieving engineer who holds a job and a research position on top of a cumbersome engineering curriculum. At first, I felt it necessary to talk to him face to face because this would show that I valued our friendship and I was approaching him directly. In line with Media Richness Theory, I chose rich communication with my friend because I wanted to read his feedback and get nonverbal cues. I wanted to make sure that he understood my intentions were of a friendly nature. On the other hand, O’Sullivan would have predicted a lean media because there is an expected negative valence by me sharing my complaints to my roommate.
However, it is difficult to decide which theory categorizes my behavior. Since the conversation was just a few words, (ie. “do your dishes please”), Media Richness would say a lean media would be sufficient because my communication was very direct and unambiguous. However, if I left a note taped to his door or left instant messages on his AIM, my intentions of giving him a friendly reminder might be misconstrued as me being antagonistic. In a face to face interaction, I was able to talk to him in a friendly manner through nonverbal cues.
Switching gears, I spent the past summer in
4 comments:
It's always hard to get someone to do their dishes. It seems your form of communication with your apt mate was in line with the Media Richness Theory because you felt is was most efficient. Emailing him might have taken too long. Just an interesting perspective: would you consider leaving a post-it note a form of "media"? If this is the case, however, then leaving a post-it note did align with the views of O'Sullivan. A post-it note could be considered "lean media" that creates distance and ambiguates your self.
Hi Vaishal,
I'd have to agree with both your interpretations in these two situations, as well as the choices you made with your communication.
Despite the Media Richness Theory recommending you to choose a lean form of media, you were correct in chooser a richer form, since the reults would probably be more "negative". That wouldn't make up for the efficiency. In this case, nonverbal cues are very important.
Your second scenario would definitely require a richer media, since the valence is positive.
Had I been in the same situation as you, I probably would have talked to my friend face to face. Its always hard to get one of your friends to do something like a chore. I've been dropping hints for weeks for my apartmentmate to unpack and last night, it was finally done. When people came over to visit she realized how ridiculous it was that she had not yet unpacked and she realized the inconvenience it posed to me, so she finally unpacked her things after three weeks of classes. So I agree, AIM, text messaging, and email may have been misinterpreted and created an unnecesary buffer between you and your close friend.
First of all, I'd like to say you did a great job analysing your personal experiences. I agree with your that O'Sullivan can better explain your decisions on media selections. In the case of your roomie, I would have chosen the same way: talk to him FtF to make sure that he accept the information that I wanted to deliver: you are my friend;I love you; but please do your dishes. This probably has nothing to do with the efficiency but more about the effects.
In the second case, I think Media Richness Theory can well explain your choice. Keeping in touch with your girlfriend is an ambiguous task and thus you selected rich media...
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