CRA Inc

12 Dec 02 @ 10:08 am

Media Richness

The medium with which you send a message is just as important as message content, and when sending any message, it’s critical to thoughtfully choose the most appropriate medium for the message in question. As such, when deciding which medium to use, it’s important to first consider its �richness.�

What is media richness? All communication media vary according to the opportunity they afford for feedback and their capacity for conveying meaning. As an example, face-to-face communication affords nearly instant feedback from the receiver, and has multiple “cues” by which the receiver can determine meaning (not only what the speaker is saying, but also the look on their face, their tone of voice, etc.). Written memos, however, have slow or no feedback opportunity, and have very few cues by which the receiver can determine meaning (only the words on the page and their format). The more feedback and cues the more “rich” the media; the less feedback and cues, the more “lean” the media.

Why does it matter? Neither rich nor lean media are �better� than the other � they’re better at communicating different types of content. As a general guideline rich media are best suited for communicating information that is strategic, uncertain, or symbolic, while lean media are more effective at communicating information that is tactical, specific, or historical. The key is to appropriately match medium and message. To help clients better understand media richness and its application, we’ve been sharing a two-page toolkit primer on the topic. You may download the primer here. (PDF format. Click to download, or right-click over the link and select “save target as” to save to a folder. If you need Adobe Acrobat Reader to read the PDF file, click here.)

posted in category(s): Theory Points