3 - media choices to interact with my best friends in Spain and the Army

My first instance of media selection would define my relationship with my best friend who studied abroad in Spain last semester. We spent almost all of our time together freshman and sophomore year and we were devastated when we realized that we would not see each other for months. For the first month of our separation, we tried emailing each other, but things just weren’t the same. Luckily, we discovered Skype in time to satisfy our need to chat and catch up on current gossip. The first time I used Skype, it blew my mind to think that we were actually speaking to each other from across the globe.

In this case, Media richness theory would apply because we refused to exchange important information over lean media. We needed more cues in order to actually interact in a way that even remotely resembled our strong friendship. We eventually made Skype dates every Wednesday at five to stay in each other’s lives. Skype basically saved our friendship. When my friend returned from Spain, our friendship was the same as it had been before she left, if not stronger.

My second instance of media selection involves choosing Myspace as a main form of communication with a special friend of mine who just joined the Army. After my best friend of three years (who was also my housemate) left Cornell and joined the Army, I was extremely angry at him for abandoning us but felt bad about my selfish feelings because I knew he was being very honorable in serving our country. It had been three months until he finally reached out to me through a Myspace message. One thing I should note about my friend is that he was never really a fan of Facebook and Myspace and that he always found Myspace to be the worst stalker network ever. Of course, I did not let him hear the end of it when he made an account and friended me. It turns out that he only made the account to keep in touch with his new Army buddies and knowing that I would be upset if he didn’t friend me I was naturally the first person he ‘stalked’.

My friend had just completed basic training and was on his way to military intelligence school. He was not allowed to make phone calls, and if he was given the rare privilege, naturally I would expect him to call his family. At first, he was only allowed to communicate with me through email or Myspace, but once he was given more privileges he emailed me his new phone number. In this case, I chose to stick with the Myspace messages because I needed more time to monitor what I would say and control my emotions. In this case, media richness theory does not come into play because I had a lot of important things to say that probably would have been more appropriate to vocalize with a richer medium (such as the phone). However, I chose lean media to account for the expected negative valence. Also, as I was the locus in most cases, I preferred mediated interaction above any other because then I felt like I was controlling our relationship. In other words, I had to have the “upper hand”.

In conclusion, I would definitely expect media richness theory to apply to my last instance, but for some reason it just didn’t. Six months passed before we interacted through synchronous means. I still wonder why it took me three months to finally face my best friend of three years. Maybe I was just scared of being offensive or harsh? I really will never know, but O’Sullivan’s theory definitely sheds some insight in terms of my concerns regarding the situation.