Assignment #3 My Media Selection

Over the summer, I was in Maryland at my friend’s lake house. On the first day there I went to the fishing store to purchase a fishing permit to fish over the weekend. While I was there I realized I didn't have my license in my wallet where I thought it had been all summer. However, I didn't panic and thought maybe it was just in my pouch connected to my school keys that I rarely used over the summer. The rest of the summer went on and the thought of looking around for my license occurred to me a few times but I never actually did anything until about a week ago when I finally decided since I drive everyday I should make sure I have a license. As you could have guessed, I did not find my license and realized it had probably been lost all summer. So here was my dilemma, how do I tell my mom I lost my license? Do I call? Email? Text message? IM? I was pretty scared and of course intended on telling her that I only just lost it and need help getting a new one (yes I know very coward of me). Anyways, I decided that this conversation was going to need a rich media because this was an important discussion where I needed instant feedback and as many cues as I could get to try and interpret how angry my mom would be.
This instance of media selection supports the Media Richness Theory because I needed as rich of a media as I had available because a text message would not have been effective enough to explain the whole situation, get feedback from my mom, and interpret her reaction. I was matching my social task to my technology and realized a phone call was in order for this very equivocal task. This does not support O’Sullivan’s Impression Management Model because I feel as though if I wanted to alter my buffer and that was the priority I would have chosen a media where my mother could not yell back at me directly, such as an email.
A different instance of media selection occurred this past weekend when I wanted to ask my Coach how she thought I did on my last erg test (test of physical strength on an indoor rowing machine). This time I was nervous about asking my coach about this and evaluated the situation as so. I wanted to hear what she had to say but I felt like I did not want to have the conversation face to face because then there was the option of her turning around the question on me and making me evaluate my performance (which is uncomfortable because you don't want to act like you didn't try your best but at the same time if she's not impressed with your score you don't want her to think that was as good as you can do) or she might actually say she was not happy with my performance and that would be hard to hear face to face. So with that in mind I decided an email would be best. This supports O'Sullivan's model because in this case I was concerned with the valence factor being negative so I preferred the mediated interaction where I felt the support of a buffer. This way I could ask my coach and get feedback without having to worry about any unexpected turns in conversation that could be negative or awkward.