This weekend my friends and I signed a lease to sublet in Collegetown next semester. However, before I could sign I needed to contact home to ask my parents about transferring money into my account so that I could write a check for the security deposit. I know that some people rarely call home when they are away at college, and other people call home everyday. I fall somewhere in the middle, as I seem to call once a week…maybe a little less. The reason I don’t choose to call home more frequently is that whenever I do both my parents insist on talking with me and at least forty minutes seem to go by before I can get them to end the conversation. Though I know they just like to talk so much because they miss me, their calls can sometimes be more of an inconvenience when I have lots of work to do.
So on Friday afternoon I had to choose whether I really had time to call my parents, when all I wanted to do was ask them a simple question. Because I had a lot of work that I was trying to accomplish before going out on Friday evening, I chose to email my parents. All I had to ask them was if they could please transfer the specific amount of money into my account. My decision to use email in this situation demonstrates the Media Richness Theory. I only needed my parents to answer a simple question, so the most efficient way to contact them was via email. I selected a lean media because the task had little to no equivocalness. I just needed my parents to respond to the one question at hand, so I did not need a richer channel of communication that would encourage them to keep talking and keep me from my work.
My parents received my email and promptly responded and transferred money into my account. Using this lean media enabled me to write my security deposit check, and it also allowed me to spend forty extra minutes on homework instead of talking to them at an inconvenient time. Come Sunday evening however, I had finished most of my work and needed a study break. Knowing that my parents would want to know how the lease signing went, I decided to call them on the phone. I chose a rich media because I knew that my parents would not just want to know that the lease was signed; they would want to know all the details. As the Media Richness Theory supports, I chose a rich channel of communication for this more equivocal task. The synchronicity of our conversation was important because I was able to immediately answer my parents’ many questions. I could also respond to the multiplicity of cues that I interpreted in their voices as I explained what the apartment looked like. In choosing when to email and call my parents I matched the medium and the social task to use the most efficient form of communication just as the Media Richness Theory states.
Comments:
http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/09/assignment-3-my-media-selection_11.html
http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/09/lean-or-rich.html
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Megan-
I can completely relate to your situation because I fall into this dilemma all the time with my parents. Whenever I want to tell them one single, simple thing, I know that if I call them the conversation will be at least twenty minutes long because they have to “catch me up.” This can be a very frustrating task as I always have work I could be doing when I talk with them.
Based on the task of simply asking your parents to transfer money for your new lease, I do agree that this can be considered an unequivocal task. It is in no way ambiguous or vague, as long as you worded it short and to the point. Additionally, choosing to e-mail your parents was a good use of efficiency since the task was unequivocal and e-mail is considered to be a lean medium. Therefore, your action does support the Media Richness Theory.
Your second experience also supports the Media Richness Theory because you knew that they would be asking detailed questions and would be expecting very detailed answers. The best way to communicate this would by synchronously with a rich medium since the topic could be seen as equivocal—giving short responses to your parents’ detailed questions would leave them confused. So great job on being efficient, once again!
Megan,
I can relate to the long conversations with parents. I feel like since I’ve come to Cornell, I’ve definitely learned to become more efficient, especially when it comes to time. That’s why if I have a quick question/request, I usually just send an email and when I have time to actually sit down and update my parents with what’s going on in my life, I’ll call. Otherwise, it’s awkward and rude to ask them for something and then try to abruptly end the conversation. (Chances are they’ll also be more reluctant to give you what you want)
From reading some of the blogs, I feel like the Media Richness Theory has been more applicable in simpler situations, like a small request. On the other hand, the O’Sullivan Model seems to be more applicable in situations where emotions and/or complex issues are at hand, like sorting out an argument.
Post a Comment