Media Richness Theory

Perhaps the most influential media theory, at least for the new media (i.e., information and communication technologies), is media richness theory (MRT) proposed by Richard Daft and Robert Lengel in their seminal 1986 article. MRT initially did not consider the new media, but they have been retroactively fit into the theory's framework.

[Page 642]MRT argued that managers could improve performance by matching media characteristics to the characteristics of the tasks. It contended that media varied in information richness (later called media richness), defined as the ability to change understanding within a time interval. MRT theorized that four factors influenced media richness: the ability of the medium to transmit multiple cues (e.g., vocal inflection, gestures), immediacy of feedback (how rapidly the medium enables receivers to respond to messages), language variety (e.g., words, mathematics, art), and the personal focus of the medium (the ability to personalize the message to the receiver).

Richer media (such as face-to-face conversations) enable users to communicate more quickly and to better understand ambiguous messages compared to leaner media (such as written memos). Therefore, according to the theory, the use of richer media would lead to better performance on equivocal tasks—tasks that have multiple and possibly conflicting interpretations of the available information—thus presenting a challenge for participants to arrive at a shared meaning. In contrast, leaner media were better for low equivocality tasks because rich media provided communicators with too much information and superfluous messages. Thus MRT argued that the use of richer media would lead to better performance for equivocal tasks (such as deciding whether to acquire a company), while use of leaner media would lead to better performance for less equivocal tasks (such as determining customer reactions to product labels). MRT is imprecise about the definition of performance, but in later works, Daft and Lengel discuss performance in three terms: making better decisions (effectiveness), making better use of time (efficiency), and establishing shared systems of meaning (consensus among participants).

MRT began as a theory of media use, not media choice. It discussed the conditions under which each medium would be most effective, not how managers actually choose media. However, the first empirical test of MRT by Daft, Lengel, and Linda Trevino in 1987 studied media choice, not the effects of use. The research presented managers with hypothetical communication tasks and asked them to choose which medium to use to see if managers' perceptions of best media-task fit matched the predictions of MRT.

The ensuing years have witnessed numerous tests of MRT. However, most studies of MRT have used it to predict media choice, not performance, which is what MRT actually addresses. Typically, researchers have asked managers to choose which medium they would use to send a set of hypothetical messages, looking to see if the managers' espoused choices fit the propositions of MRT. Although some studies have found limited support for MRT, in most cases managers have made different choices than those predicted by MRT, picking supposedly less rich media for equivocal tasks. Thus, MRT is seldom used for understanding media choice.

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