Mediarijkheid

 

Media richness 

The idea of ‘media richness’ comes from the field of communication studies, where it is used to refer to the ability for media to represent the information that is transmitted over it. Face-to-face communication is regarded as ‘rich’ because receivers of communication have access not just to the words spoken, but also the speaker’s tone of voice, his or her gestures, facial expression, posture, and even information that come from things like the kind of clothes he or she is wearing. Text-based communication is considered ‘lean’ because many of the cues we use in face-to-face communication are not available to us. From the point of view of discourse analysis, we can think of media richness as a function of the different modes a particular medium is able to represent. When looked at this way, the idea of media richness can actually be more complicated than it seems. For example, we might think of a handwritten letter as a particularly ‘lean’ medium because when we read it we cannot see the writer’s face or hear his or her voice. But there are other modes in the letter that are not usually available in face-to face communication, and these modes can actually be very expressive (such as handwriting, drawings, the way the words are arranged on the page, the texture or smell of the paper that is used). Furthermore, just because a medium is ‘rich’ does not mean that it is ‘better’. Sometimes people prefer ‘lean’ media (such as text messages) because they do not have to worry about communicating with and controlling lots of different modes such as their facial expressions. In other words, lean media usually have lower ‘transaction costs’. And just because a medium is ‘lean’ doesn’t mean that people can’t be very expressive when they use it. Media scholar Joseph Walther, in fact, noted that sometimes when using ‘lean’ media, people are more willing to express their emotions and reveal secrets, a phenomenon he called ‘hyperpersonal communication’. 

Rank the media below based on how rich you think they are. Then explain your rankings to another person.  Television         WhatsApp        Voice telephone           Video-chat              Print newspapers