In order to invite people, one can individually call, text, speak to, or send out facebook invites, among other possibilities. O'Sullivan's model suggests the use of a more mediated interaction through text, instant messaging, or email. This is due to the possibility of the valence being negative when an invitee has to decline. In order to avoid the discomfort associated with failed plans, mediated interactions would be better in that they hide non verbal cues that indicate said discomfort. The invitee is saved from seeing the disappointment of the inviter and the inviter is saved from dealing with having to assure the invitee that it was okay to decline.
I settled on face to face communication to invite people, seeing as how many of my friends are in my classes. My choice of FtF seems to apply Media Richness Theory. While some may argue that simple asynchronous text messaging is efficient enough to pass on invitation information, it's important to take into consideration the goal of the exchange. To clarify, while inviting people, my goal was to have a very early estimate as to how many people would actually come, not just to throw out invitations. Text messages can be easily ignored and responses may be weaker commitments. FtF, on the other hand, is a richer medium and the extra cues, such as hesitation, vagueness, mindlessness, can provide a stronger sense of when people really intend to go, or are simply trying to be polite. The efficient choice was clear; FtF.
As for the second media selection, I chose to examine a morphing or changing media selection. At least for myself, I often send out a text message to a friend asking if they've eaten lunch yet and depending on their response I may change my media selection. The initial text message follows the O'Sullivan Theory in that the possibility of negative valence due to negative responses (“Yes I've already eaten” or “no, but I'm not hungry”) led me to use the mediated, buffered media. If they respond negatively it is easy to text back, “ok, catch you later”. Imagine, the same taking place over a phone conversation:
1: “Hey, just wondering, have you eaten yet?”
2: “Not really hungry.”
1: “Oh, uh, ok. Um, bye.”
However, if they respond positively, I usually change my media selection and call the person in order to exchange details on where to eat, and when to meet. This change to a richer medium for more efficient exchange follows the Media Richness Theory.
It is interesting to see how I, “test the waters,” with a text, in line with O'Sullivan Theory, but can easily change media selection to fit MRT due to the evolving situation.
4 comments:
Joe,
After reading your post, I thoroughly agree with your indication of how text messages are used to "test the waters", in a sense when communicating a message, specifically a request, to an individual.
Drawing from your first media selection choice, face to face communication, I think that you touched on some important things. First, when thinking about the medium you want to use in communicating with individuals, it is important to keep in mind your goal or purpose. In your example, you wanted to make sure that you have a accurate count of how many individuals were going to be in attendance. Thus, in light of the fact that people can always fall back on the "oh, did you send me a text message? I didn't get it". Also, like you said any accepatance could be viewed as a weak committment because they would just be saying yes to avoid any uncomfortable feeling associated with declining your request. I think here you touch upon something interesting with the idea of how social norms and perceptions truly impact our behavior. No one wants to be the "
bad guy". Thus, face to face communication, which would allow you to touch upon such nonverbal cues like hesitation and emotional leakage, was your best bet. Do you think that calling over the phone would have illicited a response similar to that of sending a text message?
Hi Joe,
I think it's interesting that you 'test the waters' before meeting your friends for lunch via text messaging. You've described the initial texting in the view of O'Sullivan's Theory, but do you think that it could also be viewed under the Media Richness Theory, in that you text someone to confirm whether or not you can meet somewhere? Lean media is often used for a less equivocal task such as this one.
I can also relate to your spreading the word about your Star Wars shindig via ftf. Planning a social event that involves a lot of people certainly involves more intricacies than setting a lunch date, and dealing with people's different levels of desire to attend is always something you'll want to haggle with in person. For my 21st Birthday Party, I combined two forms of communincation: I sent out email invites to people for efficiency, detailing the time and address of the party, then followed up with people in person to get them excited about the party. Media Richness Theory definitely came into play for that planning.
Your post seems unique in that you offered a media selection that used both Media Richness and O'Sullivan. I think that most media selections are affected by both theories, and end up being a hybrid of both. Your choice to initially use a slim text medium, then upgrade to a richer one when the valence was confirmed to be positive supports this.
The choice to use FtF for invites to the movie party was also interesting. Most other posts used invitations as an example of a message that can be conveyed effectively and efficiently on leaner medium, but you chose to use a richer medium to extract more information than simply yes or no. This assertion was back up by good reasoning as well, showing that there is more than one way to effectively convey messages over media.
I'm not sure we can really trust the analysis of someone who hasn't seen Star Wars. That being said, I like the strategy of testing the waters using a text-based medium. I also find it fascinating that you'd consider it the interaction to have a negative valence if something as minor as the other person having already eating had happened. This makes me wonder whether each individual person has a different tolerance for positive and negative valence, so that different individuals make different media selection decisions at different valence threshholds. I suppose this could also work for locus, although locus tends to be more binary. This would be interesting to test though.
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