November 11th, 2010
Kock, Ned. “The Ape That Used Email: Understanding E-Communication Behavior through Evolution Theory.” Communications of AIS 5 3 (2001): 29.
In September 2009, I published posts on media richness theory and media synchronicity theory. (Be sure to check out this week’s posts continuing the discussion on each of those, as well.) Additionally, I discussed media naturalness theory . While that post provides a decent overview of the theory, including why he finds media richness and media synchronicity insufficient, I want to expound more on this article/theory.
A motivating factor behind Kock’s development of media naturalness theory is his observation that the existing theories that try to explain “e-communication” fall under either technological theory or under social theory. Read the rest of this entry »
November 9th, 2010
Dennis, A. R., et al. “Beyond Media Richness: An Empirical Test of Media Synchronicity Theory.” Proceedings of the Thirty-First Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Vol I (1998): 48-57.
I first introduced and discussed media synchronicity theory in a September 2009 post, . While that provides a decent overview of the theory, including why they find media richness theory insufficient and thus developed their own theory, I want add some detail of this article/theory.
Dennis and Valacich define media synchronicity as “… the extent to which a communication environment encourages individuals to work together on the same activity, with the same information, at the same time; i.e. to have a shared focus” (48). The authors, acknowledge the value of media richness theory–that a medium’s ability to support various communication modes and process that naturally occur in a FtF communication setting– is important, yet find the theory incomplete, since there are other important media dimensions to consider. Now, with the existence of some electronic media that were not available at the time of Daft and Lengel’s media richness article, there are new ways to communicate, such as with online video, which may provide more effective support for certain communication modes than addressed in media richness theory. Read the rest of this entry »
November 7th, 2010
Daft, R. L., and R. H. Lengel. (1984). “Information Richness – a New Approach to Managerial Behavior and Organizational Design.” Research in Organizational Behavior 6 : 191-233.
Information Richness is the foundation of media richness theory, which I addressed in a September 2009 post and again in March 2010. While those two posts (particularly the first one) provide a good overview of the theory, I want to add a few points directly from the 1984 article that is the genesis for this topic.
The article looks at communication in the workplace and discusses models of organizational communication and how organizations meet the need for certain types/methods of communication for specific purposes. However, the root of the theory is not specific to workplace or hierarchical communication, but rather regards the differences in the way information is received from different communication methods. Read the rest of this entry »
May 23rd, 2010
Gurak, L. J. (2001). Cyberliteracy: Navigating the internet with awareness. New Haven Conn.; London: Yale University Press.
Even in 2001 (when Cyberliteracy was published), the use of the internet for distance education was growing. Gurak addresses this point from sort of a media richness perspective.
“The richest form of communication has always been face-to-face. Humans can communicate so much with their bodies. Read the rest of this entry »
April 24th, 2010
Nowak, K. L., Watt, J., Walther, J. B., Pascal, C., Hill, S., & Lynch, M. (2004/01/01/). Contrasting time mode and sensory modality in the performance of computer mediated groups using asynchronous videoconferencing. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 37th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Place of Publication: Los Alamitos, CA, USA; Big Island, HI, USA. Country of Publication: USA.
A foundational issue to my dissertation research is the question of what real differences there are between Face to Face (FtF) communication and various media, specifically video communication. This issue can be viewed from various perspectives, such as comprehension and retention, enjoyment, social bonding, ease of use, willingness to participate, etc. I frequently struggle with trying to avoid falling into the trap of perceiving one communication medium as inherently superior or inferior and instead attempt to look toward identifying what the real differences are and how they affect our communication choices and perceptions. However, identifying a given method’s superiority, or even a hierarchical inferiority-to-superiority structure of communication media is a common approach (e.g. theories of media richness, media synchronicity, and media naturalness). Generally, it is seen that Read the rest of this entry »