Earlier today, I had to communicate with the captain of the fencing team. I was going to be late to practice. This was a fairly straightforward message, and I did not want to have to go into my reasons for my lateness. As a result, I sent him a text message simply stating “I will be about fifteen minutes late to practice tonight- Andrew” This was an extremely unequivocal message. This is why I selected text messaging, which is not a very rich medium. There was no room for misinterpretation or distraction. As Media Richness Theory predicts, I selected a medium of communication with a richness proportional to the equivocally of my intended message.
Conversely, I had an argument with my girlfriend this morning. I had just found out that I was going to have to dedicate my entire weekend to a fraternity obligation, and would be unable to keep the careful plans we had laid down for Saturday. As we have been having trouble spending as much time as we would like together due to all of our new commitments this year, I knew she would not be thrilled with this news. Due to the give-and-take of the interaction I anticipated would follow my announcement, as well as the vague nature of my intended message I chose to speak to her in person. Media Richness Theory would also support this decision. I chose the richest possible medium to allow me to clarify the meaning of my extremely equivocal message.
My two interactions were opposite in equivocality, and thus I chose to utilize mediums of greatly different richness to convey my messages. This behavior strongly supports Media Richness Theory.
1 comment:
Hi Andrew! I agree that Media Richness Theory best captures your first instance of media selection, but I would argue that O’Sullivan’s model might also shed some light on your choice. Maybe going into your reasons for being late, a negative valence, could have damaged your image (the locus is clearly self) in the eyes of your captain. Efficiency is always important when running late, but so is self-presentation.
In your second experience with media selection you wanted clarity in your dialectic and thus chose a rich channel for your communication. The only thing that I would add is that this contradicts O’Sullivan’s third hypothesis. You did not choose a mediated channel when your valence was negative and the locus was the self.
Note the TA: This is the link to people's comments to my post this week: https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3186874989969223722&postID=5450747812145520430
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