Upon receiving this assignment last week, my original plan was to go into a chat room and pretend to be an 80 year old man or something of the sort. It sounded like it might be fun and after reading so much about it, I was eager to try out some digital deception of my own. However, ongoing relationship drama between two of my friends, Katie and Dan, lent itself perfectly to a discussion of O’Sullivan’s Impression Management Model. The two flirted all summer and have been stuck in a relationship of indeterminate status ever since we got back to school.
On Saturday night, Katie got fed up with all of the uncertainty and mixed signals and texted Dan to tell him so, saying, “I don’t want to do this anymore.” She went on in a subsequent text message to tell him how upset she was, to question whether or not she and Dan were really just friends, and to say that she had rebuffed the advances of another man at a party, in part because of the ambiguous state of her relationship with Dan. I think Katie’s choice of a lean medium to convey her message represents an effort on her part to actively manage the impression she was creating. Her choice is not consistent with the predictions of Media Richness Theory. The equivocal nature of her task, conveying to Dan her feelings for him and her desire to get the status of their relationship clarified, could undoubtedly have been accomplished more efficiently in a rich medium such as the telephone or a face to face interaction. In such a medium, Katie would have been able to convey her message with little ambiguity given the multiplicity of cues that would have been available to Dan. In addition, immediate feedback from him would have been available to her so that she could have found out once and for all how he really felt. Katie strategically chose a mediated interaction because the valence of her interaction was negative because of her frustration and the locus was herself so it was easier to have a buffer in between her and Dan. This observation put Katie’s interaction in the “confess” spectrum in O’Sullivan’s chart.
How did Dan respond to Katie’s entreaty? Through Facebook message, of course! He essentially apologized for being the cause of Katie’s distress and told her it was her decision whether or not she still wanted to continue having any sort of relationship with him. He added that if she did, he certainly wanted to talk to her about his feelings. Popular opinion would probably say that Dan should have at the very least called Katie. O’Sullivan would have said that Dan’s actions conformed perfectly to his model. Dan knew that Katie felt hurt and angry and it was mostly his fault. Given a negative valence and a locus of self, people strongly prefer mediated communication, just as Katie had in her text message and just as Dan did in his email. Both of their messages balanced ambiguity and clarity in such a way that partially shielded both of them from potential rejection and hurt. Hopefully, Katie and Dan will be able to decide what they want and work out their relationship issues – with or without technological mediation.
4 comments:
Well written post Sarah.
The event seems more interesting than any story about an 80 year old man. The interesting point about your post, that I wanted to mention was that they both chose the mediated communication media even though they were could obviously have talked together. I agree, this is an example of O'Sullivan's Impression Management. It seems like the two were fearing negative valences from themselves. However, does it seem likely that under any other circumstance, other than the one presented, the two would have executed a FtF meeting rather than one over a mediated interaction space?
Your experience seems like it fits really well with O’Sullivan’s model for choosing various types of media and you did a really good job of explaining it. I think relationships serve as great example for O’Sullivan’s model because there is always the conflict between how ambiguous or clear to be while communicating.
I’ve also had a similar experience that adds almost another layer to O’Sullivan’s model. While trying to decide what to say in a CMC conversation on of my close friends has often asked me through AIM what he should type or say over the phone to the girl that he liked. So not only was he selecting and carefully deciding what to say, but I was as well adding to the selected self presentation that often occurs through CMC.
I think you did a really great job showing how O’Sullivan’s model for medium selection really does apply to the decisions that we make in how to interact with each other on a daily basis.
Sarah, I really enjoyed reading your post. It dealt with something I think everyone has experienced at some point in their lives. No one wants to face rejection and the thought of failure, thus we will do all in our power to create a buffer to minimize the hurtful feelings of rejection from another person. The situation you depicted was a great example of O’Sullivan’s model how we choose mediated communication when we fear a negative valence and a self-locus. The situation reminded me of the time one of my friends’ boyfriends broke up with her over a text message. So many people will avoid confrontation of issues at all costs and with so many lean communication channels available to us, it’s no wonder we’re so inclined to use it. However, sometimes, I think that people over look the necessity of discussing issues face to face with a person, it always seems to mean more with a personal touch, and it is something we lose using lean types of communication.
http://comm245green.blogspot.com/2007/09/assignment-3-when-he-was-girl.html
http://comm245green.blogspot.com/2007/09/im-basically-attention-whore-3.html
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