In: Economics
Describe the information richness of communication media.
Media has different levels of personal emphasis, especially when a media integrates more personal feelings and emotions, the message is conveyed in a better way. For example, face-to - face contact as opposed to e-mail communication. When the requisite feedback is provided a correspondence is considered complete, the reception of feedback is often used as a way to correctly say the message is received. Feedback ensures that any error in the transmission can be immediately corrected
There are different ways in which the communication information medium is achieved, and these signals may be either visual or auditive. An advertisement about the dangers of smoking, for example, may be expressed using a mixture of signs. The background score may be sombre and dull, the visuals may show someone in a hospital bed who is suffering, and the voice over may be in a serious tone.
Variety of language used It applies to the variety of meanings that can be expressed by the use of language symbols such as numbers or natural language. Numbers show accuracy while natural language helps to express different ideas and concepts. It is claimed that a medium holds more resources because it has a greater multitude of requirements. On this basis, in terms of their richness, the media can be ranked in the following descending order: face-to - face, video , audio, and text systems. Consequently, media is seen as very rich, very rich, lean or very poor.
Sometimes the need for a communication task is necessary to reduce uncertainty (implies finding the right answer to a question) or to reduce the equivocality (finding the right answer question). Lean media (emails) was best used to reduce uncertainty according to the media richness theory and rich media (face-to - face) was best suited to reduce equivocality. Therefore it can be stated that the theory based on whether there is uncertainty or equivocality in a situation, different methods of media communication should be used based on their richness levels.