First off, I admire you for having the courage to ask a professor to move a prelim FtF. I agree with your interpretation of the situation, but I also think it can support Rich Media Theory as well. In terms of using a rich medium, changing your prelim could have been considered an equivocal task. (because in most cases I know I wouldn't really be sure ho a professor would react to a request to change a prelim date) Thus media richness theory would support the FtF media choice.
Zak, your perspectives are interesting, but I think you underestimate the Media Richness Theory’s relevance to your interactions. In both cases it sounds like you picked the medium’s that were most efficient; in the first situation, to reschedule your prelim you thought FtF would enable you to best accomplish your goal, while in the second, you perceived a phone call to the bank to be the most efficient medium because of it’s effectiveness and convenience. I agree with you that the first example also incorporates O’Sullivan’s Impression Management Model, but only in the sense that you chose FtF instead of email as a means to enhance and strengthen your professor’s impression of you and thus boost your chances to get a reschedule. The Media Richness Theory dictates that we choose communication mediums in such a way as to maximize efficiency, while O’Sullivan suggests that we pick mediums to help us regulate our self presentation and thus others’ impressions of us, and as such, I don’t really think this applied much to your second scenario.
2 comments:
Hi Zak -
First off, I admire you for having the courage to ask a professor to move a prelim FtF. I agree with your interpretation of the situation, but I also think it can support Rich Media Theory as well. In terms of using a rich medium, changing your prelim could have been considered an equivocal task. (because in most cases I know I wouldn't really be sure ho a professor would react to a request to change a prelim date) Thus media richness theory would support the FtF media choice.
- Sherrie Chavez
Zak, your perspectives are interesting, but I think you underestimate the Media Richness Theory’s relevance to your interactions. In both cases it sounds like you picked the medium’s that were most efficient; in the first situation, to reschedule your prelim you thought FtF would enable you to best accomplish your goal, while in the second, you perceived a phone call to the bank to be the most efficient medium because of it’s effectiveness and convenience. I agree with you that the first example also incorporates O’Sullivan’s Impression Management Model, but only in the sense that you chose FtF instead of email as a means to enhance and strengthen your professor’s impression of you and thus boost your chances to get a reschedule. The Media Richness Theory dictates that we choose communication mediums in such a way as to maximize efficiency, while O’Sullivan suggests that we pick mediums to help us regulate our self presentation and thus others’ impressions of us, and as such, I don’t really think this applied much to your second scenario.
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