Medium Selection 1
As I was procrastinating on Facebook, I was reminded that it was a close friend’s birthday. The only problem was that I was not reminded by a Facebook notice but rather by the close friend herself. She messaged me asking why I didn’t call her to wish her a happy birthday two weeks ago and that she was disappointed. I felt horrible and decided to call her to explain how busy I was but instead I ended up sending her a two page essay through email.
Medium Selection 2
On a Saturday night I spent the whole night watching a friend study for his quiz on Monday. I was watching TV for most of the time but the main point is that I was with him while he was struggling and complaining about how Econ is ruining his life. He managed to get some studying done and ended up passing his first Econ quiz on Monday. Right after I found I wanted to show him how excited I was so I invited him out to dinner to congratulate him in person.
Analysis
The two situations described confirm O’Sullivan’s Impression Management Model. His model suggests that individuals recognize the capacity of mediated communication channels to manage ambiguity and clarity and use those to manage self-relevant information. Two influencing factors are the locus (whether one’s own or one’s partner’s self-presentation is at issue) and the valence (whether the self-presentation is perceived to be threatened or supported).
In the first situation in which I had to confess that I had forgotten her birthday, I perceived the valence to be “negative” and the locus to be “self” and therefore, chose to use email (mediated channel) instead of a richer one such as telephone or face-to-face. Although if I had explained to her face-to-face I would have been able to read her nonverbal reactions immediately, I needed a “buffer” to reduce the embarrassment and distress of disclosing the negative information.
In the second situation I chose a rich and unmediated channel to express my genuine praise for my friend because the expected valence was positive and the locus was his self-presentation. There was no need for a buffer to play the news down and there were great benefits to congratulating him through a high clarity channel such as being able to share experience with him with hugs.
My experiences confirm O’Sullivan’s model while they disprove the Media Richness theory, which says that individuals simply seek high and low efficiency in making channel choices. Perhaps it may be most efficient to pursue simply efficiency but the difficulty I had in making my choices reveal that it’s never that simple.
Comment 1: Comm 245 Blue: 3 Quest for Spinach
Comment 2: Comm 245 Blue: 3 Where dem beautiful grlz at??
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3 comments:
You give two really good examples of media selection that can be applied well to O'Sullivan's model. However, I'm curious about your initial decision to call your friend. I know you mention that you were seeking a mediated channel through which you would explain how busy you were (which definitely supports O'Sullivan's model), but why was your first reaction to call? I also wonder if there are any theories which take first choice and second choice channel selection into account.
Great post!
I really liked how you divided up your blog in three sections: the two examples followed by your analysis.
You also really showed how this model seems to explain situations in which the impression manager is much less confrontational than the one in the Media Richness Theory. Here, you preferred to email you friend instead of calling her because you preferreed having a buffer (negative valence). In the second occasion, you wanted to reward a friend, and decided to do this in person (positive valence).
Your explanation of O'Sullivan's model really shows that you were able to understand and explain the concepts!
I liked this post also. One thing that interests me is the valence of telling a friend that you forgot her birthday. Clearly if you just call her up and tell her that you forgot it would be a negative. However, the email might actually have a positive valence depending on what it sends. O'Sullivan's model suggests that messages have a fixed locus and valence, and we choose a medium based on this. However, I'm not so sure. I think choosing email communication might have actually enabled you to send a message with a more distant locus and a more positive valence than you would have been able to send if you had communicated on the phone or face to face.
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