This past weekend I used quite a few means of communication. On Friday, my athletic team at Cornell had a game against St. Bonaventure. I was particularly interested in visiting the school because one of my very good friends, Josh, has been in contact with their men’s soccer coach. He has been hoping to impress the coach for a while and wants to be a recruit for the team next year. He hadn’t heard from the St. Bonaventure’s coach for a while so was beginning to look at other schools. After our game, a friend of mine who is on the St. Bonaventure men’s soccer team was there and we started talking about Josh. He said that his coach was very impressed with Josh and really hoped he was still interested in being a member of his soccer team. Of course I opted to call Josh right away to tell him this news rather than send him a text message or email. This action agrees with O’Sullivan’s Theory, because I used a positive valence and the locus was my friend Josh. The number for the likelihood of using an equivocal means of communication is very low when praising others. I wanted to receive feedback and hear Josh’s excitement so I called him rather than text him.
A few minutes later, however, I wanted to send a text to a friend here at school to let her know what time we were going to be home tonight. No response was needed and the task was not an equivocal one at all. I therefore used a lean media source. This particular situation, therefore, involves the Media Richness Theory more so than O’Sullivan’s Theory. Although, the valence of the situation was positive, and the locus of the situation was my friend, I still opted to use an unequivocal means of communications.
It is very interesting to analyze and observe how we communicate in our every day life. I am also amazed at how often we communicate with each other and how we choose specific methods over others without even realizing it.
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2 comments:
Hi Rebecca,
You did a great job relating your experiences and choices of media to the theories we discussed in class. It seems that O'Sullivan's model fits best with more emotionally charged interactions than with the more everyday "I'll be back at 8" type of messages. It seems that these interactions have a more neutral valence and therefore it is difficult for O'Sullivan's model to predict our behavior, and that is where Media Richness Theory applies the best.
Rebecca,
Your first example definately seems to be a perfect example of the Impression Management Model. This situation definately fits into the "praise" category, as it had a positve valence and the locus was directed towards your friend. You didn't consider, however, how it fits into Media Richness Theory. I would argue that it conforms to that theory as well because the task is not completely straightforward and unequivocal. Because it deals with emotions, I believe that it is at least somewhat equivocal, and therefore a face to face interaction would be optimal as it offers a greater variety of cues.
The only comment I would have on your second experience is that I am confused why you labeled the valence as positive. To me, it seems much more neutral than either positive or negative. You are right, however, that O'Sullivan's Theory just dosen't seem to apply, and it is a much better example of Media Richness Theory.
Danielle
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