Making choices about which of the many different types of media to use in which situation is something that I didn’t realize I did so many times on a daily basis. One choice came when I was in a fight with a close friend of mine this weekend. We were on the phone and all of the yelling and trying to talk over one another in an attempt to have our point of view heard was getting us no where. After we hung up because we were both so frustrated and feeling as though we weren’t being understood, we began to text and surprisingly our communication went a lot more smoothly and we were able to resolve our fight. The conversation on the phone was too heated and there wasn’t a chance for us to really think about what we wanted to say and get it out how we wanted to say it without being interrupted. The text messaging acted as a buffer in our conversation. I believe this supports O’Sullivan’s model and allowed us to effectively communicate because we chose a medium where we had interactional control.
Another choice came when my friend from home broke up with her long time boyfriend. I saw that her relationship status changed to single on facebook and I was surprised and concerned. So instead of texting her or messaging her on facebook just to see if everything was okay, I chose to call her and see how she was doing. I was really happy that I did that because I was able to hear the tone of her voice and the hesitations etc. that made all the difference in understanding and responding in order to make her feel better. This supports the Media Richness Theory because of how important the verbal cues and available feedback were in choosing the richer medium of the telephone over text.
2 comments:
In your first media selection example, you described a situation in which you called your friend to relay information about a funny story. You stated that your example was supported by both the Impression Management Model and the Media Richness Theory; however, I would like to share why I think it is really only best explained by the Media Richness Theory. According to O’Sullivan’s model of impression management, one would prefer a mediated interaction when valence is expected to be negative and locus is expected to be the self. In your example, you said that your funny story would be focused on yourself and the valence would be negative—a confession. Consequently, this should have encouraged you to want to use IM as opposed to the phone to share your story, allowing you to create a buffer and exercise maximum control. If your story had had positive valence you would then have wanted to converse on the phone, which would have enabled you to boost yourself. Though I don’t agree with your assertion about O’Sullivan’s model, I do agree with you that this example can be explained by Media Richness Theory. Because sharing your story was a more equivocal task, you would have wanted to choose a richer medium like the phone because of the availability of instant feedback and the multiplicity of cues, which would be important for you to use and assess when sharing a negatively valenced story about yourself.
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