Media Appropriateness: Using social presence theory to compare traditional and new organizational media

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Media Appropriateness: Using social presence theory to compare traditional and new organizational media

R. E. Rice

Abstract

This study assesses a scale measuring appropriateness of media for a variety of organizational communication activities and then compares seven media across six organizational sites. The ranking of media were face-to-face, telephone, meetings, desktop video and video conferencing, voice mail, text, and electronic mail. Although information exchange and socioemotional relations dimensions emerged, the first provided a parsimonious solution. Multidimensional scaling placed traditional media in separate clusters, and new media together with some instances of text and phone, along interpersonal-mediated and synchronous-asynchronous axes. The appropriateness of face-to-face and meetings did not change over time, whereas ratings of phone and text (to some extent) and new media did. Appropriateness of new media was weakly associated with use. Finally, there was very little evidence of social information processing influence on appropriateness, except for organizational newcomers’ ratings of the newest medium, desktop video.

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Annotation

This study looks at best practices for usage of specific forms of media within contexts of organizations. The seven forms of communication medias are: face-to-face, telephone, meetings, desktop video and video conferencing, voice mail, text, and email. While people were found to prefer medias in the above order, the study also found that a person’s relative familiarity with the media had a large influence in their comfort and use of the medias. Multidimensional scaling also found that traditional medias are sorted into their own clusters. Further, face-to-face contacts have not decreased in their appropriateness, but new forms of media have.

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