I called my mom the other night in response to a frantic message left on IM: "arrrgh.. where are you when I have news?!" Obviously, I was sad to have missed the news and called her as soon as I got the message. She answered and, upon my asking her what the news was, told me that my brother was going to be home any minute and she didn't know if she had time to tell me. Of course, I couldn't just wait until the next day to find out news potentially involving my brother (it's a sibling rivalry thing), so I pressed her. The news, as I suspected, had to do with my brother and his relationship status. So, she hurriedly told me the gossip and we said goodnight before my brother arrived home.
Since my mom first wanted to tell me the news over a mediated or lean channel and not over the phone (rich channel), her decision seems to support the Media Richness Theory in that she originally chose to deliver the news (which I consider less equivocal) over a lean medium. Her decision does not support O'Sullivan's model because the valence was positive and the locus was other which suggests that she would have preferred to use a less mediated way to give me the news (and her original decision was to use mediated communication).
The second selected message also involved my brother, but not in regards to his social life. As most of us probably know, football season just started up. My brother and I are big fans, and often enjoy watching the games together. However, the current situation doesn't allow for that. So, instead, we call each other periodically during the game. I noticed yesterday that the only times we end up calling each other is if the opposing team has done something really stupid resulting in something good for our team, or if our team has just made an exceptional play.
I can't say that this message selection really supports the Media Richness Theory because while the message was less equivocal, we both decided to use a rich channel to communicate with each other. In this situation, O'Sullivan's model is better supported because we are mostly demonstrating a negative valence with an other locus. However, I think the main reason we both choose to use a richer channel is more due to each other's availability during the game rather than focusing on the message we're about the send. For instance, I know my brother will be watching the game in a bar with friends and won't be near something like IM or e-mail, so it'll be easier to contact him on his phone. I'm curious to know where that kind of reasoning falls into these theories.
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A theme across both of the situations you encountered is that often we chose media based on what is available to us at the current time, and what we think is available to the person we are communicating with at that time as well. I definitely agree with this and the most common example from my life is texting my friends during the day when I am in class/when I am pretty sure they are in class.
With regard to your first example, I believe your selection to call your mother after seeing her message still supports Media Richness Theory to an extent. I believe since there was a good deal of emotion involved with your excitement over the news, you may have selected a rich media, the phone, to be able to convey some social cues such as tone of voice to engage in a more meaningful conversation than what could have been had over instant messenger. Even though you say the news was less equivocal, by communicating through a richer medium, maybe this allowed more information on a personal topic to be conveyed. Especially with gossip, it is fun to be able to hear the other person’s laughter and emotions through their voice.
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