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 »
March 11th, 2010
Again, I am merely touching on this theory due to the fact that I am this week discussing Junghyun Kim’s 2003 article in which he discusses this and other media theories. Soon, I will elaborate on this theory, including the subsequent Media Synchronicity and Media Naturalness theories.
Media richness theory, proposed by Daft and Lengel in 1984, essentially states that task performance increases when the task needs are matched to the medium’s richness. Additionally, the theory suggests that individuals predictably favor the use of specific communication media to perform certain tasks. Specifically, that rich media are a more likely to be found appropriate for “equivocal” communication, which occurs more in complex tasks. Daft and Lengel define the richness of media as the ability of information to change understanding within a time interval. The theory argues that the richness of media differs between media types, with face-to-face communication being richer than communicating via email, for example. Read the rest of this entry »
September 19th, 2009
In my last posts, I’ve discussed media richness theory and media synchronicity theory, the former being foundational for the latter. Another theory on communication, which stems as a response to (actually, an alternative to) media richness theory, is the media naturalness theory proposed by Ned Kock (2001). He details two problems with the media richness theory that make it insufficient. Read the rest of this entry »
September 17th, 2009
My last post discussed media richness theory. While it is not without worth for my research purposes, the theory is somewhat limited in ways that have been discussed by various authors, including Dennis and Valacich in their 1998 article, “Beyond Media Richness: An Empirical Test of Media Synchronicity Theory.” The authors define certain limitations and a lack of empirical support for media richness theory. They conclude that Read the rest of this entry »
