Medium Selection # 1:
During a break between my classes, I decided to check Facebook to kill some time before I having to enter lecture. As I was checking my messages, I noticed that a new message lay unattended. Generally, I am very good with responding to messages promptly, so this new message came as a surprise, considering that it was about 1 week old. The message was from one of my co-workers, who wanted to give me information about when the next staff meeting would be, as well as what would be discussed. In the message, he explained that he resorted to Facebook in light of the fact that I had not replied to my Cornell email. I knew that I was in the wrong, but I also knew that once I did respond I needed to make sure I had some sort of explanation. In short, I had to lie, which is something I am horrible at doing over the phone, and especially in person. Thus, I decided to respond via the medium that offered most room for an invention of the truth- good old Facebook.
Medium Selection # 2:
One night, before shutting off my computer, I did one final round of email checking. As a student, particularly an involved student, one gets a swarm of emails daily regarding everything under the sun. In a mere 15 minutes one can accumulate as many as 20 emails in the blink of an eye. Thus, just as I suspected, when I opened my email there were a ton of unread messages screaming for attention. I began the process of deleting the undesirable ones, and then I noticed a couple that were a little outlandish. The senders were not college students, but in fact the individuals who I had worked with this summer during my internship. I felt really bad because upon my departure I assured everyone that I would routinely keep in touch, however once classes got going this was not the case. Anyway, when I clicked on the messages, a prompt came up informing me that the send wanted to be notified when I read the email. In my mind I knew that I did not have adequate time to construct a suitable response, but I knew that if I opened it and did not respond they might think that I just brushed them off. Thus I closed my email and decided to call their offices in the morning to check in. It was perfect because I could sound interested an engaged, but also multi-task.
Reflection/Analysis:
The aforementioned situations speak to O’Sullivan’s Impression Management Model. According to O'Sullivan's model, people are aware of the fact that mediated communication channels allow for the management of a certain degree of ambiguity and clarity, implementing such characteristics as a means of managing information that is deemed self-relevant. According to the Impression Management Model, the two influencing factors include the valence, which means whether or not the self-presentation is perceived as being threatened as opposed to supported and the locus, which is whether or not an individual's personal or another individual's self-presentation is at stake.
With respect to the first situation where I had to communicate with my coworker about my inability to respond in a timely fashion, I perceived the valence to be "negative" and the locus to be "self". As a result, I chose to use Facebook, a form of mediated communication, in lieu of another richer medium such as meeting up in person in the library or calling her during one of my breaks from class. the reason why I chose to use Facebook was because I knew that I would show signs that I was lying about the reason why I did not respond. Clearly, I did not want this information to be known so I needed to find a way to mask it. Facebook allowed me to now have to worry about me "leaking" any cues that would indicate my deception as I blatantly presented untrue information.
With respect to the second aforementioned situation I decided to use an unmediated channel that was more rich. I realize that I had such a good experience this summer working with the women in my department, and I genuinely wanted to speak to them, but was just cautious of how I would be perceived. There was no need to hide or cower away from such communication because I was actually looking forward to speaking with them, and I wanted to convey that in the best possible way.
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2 comments:
1st situation: It's interesting that your co-worker chose to send you a message via Facebook when email failed. The Facebook message system is similar to the email system; it also sends notification to the provided email address upon receiving a message. This would be a good idea, if the automatically generated message wasn't usually caught by spam filters. I wonder, in this case, why your co-worker didn't just call you when there was no response?
2nd situation: Good call (no pun intended, I swear). I cringe when people I'll rarely see after a class/project/event say "keep in touch," because I'm terrible at doing so. Using the phone is more "personal," and an implicit apology to them for falling out of touch.
Julia,
I probably would have responded similarly in the first situation. I find it interesting, now that we are learning about deception, how your media selection of Facebook messaging when lying also fits with the Social Distance Theory (people use the most “socially distant” media to lie).
Although your second instance of media selection fits with O’Sullivan’s model nicely, I also think it supports Media Richness Theory because you chose the most efficient media to convey your message. I’m sure internship co-workers were appreciative of the increased cues you provided them through a richer media.
-Kristina Moore
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