Dennis, A. R., et al. “Beyond Media Richness: An Empirical Test of Media Synchronicity Theory.” Proceedings of the Thirty-First Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Vol I (1998): 48-57.

I first introduced and discussed media synchronicity theory in a September 2009 post, . While that provides a decent overview of the theory, including why they find media richness theory insufficient and thus developed their own theory, I want add some detail of this article/theory.

Dennis and Valacich define media synchronicity as “… the extent to which a communication environment encourages individuals to work together on the same activity, with the same information, at the same time; i.e. to have a shared focus” (48). The authors, acknowledge the value of media richness theory–that a medium’s ability to support various communication modes and process that naturally occur in a FtF communication setting– is important, yet find the theory incomplete, since there are other important media dimensions to consider. Now, with the existence of some electronic media that were not available at the time of Daft and Lengel’s media richness article, there are new ways to communicate, such as with online video, which may provide more effective support for certain communication modes than addressed in media richness theory.

The authors detail two of the five media dimensions, originally identified in a 1996 Dennis and Valacich article, that are key to understanding the effects of media use on the participants’ ability to communicate and process the information from a message: immediacy of feedback and concurrency; the remaining three are symbol variety, persistence, and rehearsability (50).

Immediacy of Feedback – The extent to which the medium enables users to receive rapid feedback.
This relates to the extent to which a medium can provide bi-directional, simultaneous communication. Another key point is the ease with which a participant can interrupt another to gain clarification or to redirect the conversation.

Concurrency – The number of simultaneous conversations that can exist effectively in the medium.
Consider the telephone the originally only offered 1:1 communication and later provided options of conference calling. However, even though one can have multiple participants, it is still not feasible to have more than one conversation effectively. Conversely, with something like an online chat session, one can have multiple participants and the group can have two or three simultaneous conversations before it get too muddy and difficult to follow a single one. A higher level of concurrency also means that more people can participate in a discussion.

Because participants in a FtF setting must take turns speaking, it is not feasible to have more than about ten if all participants are expected to interact. However, with the example of the online video conversation (OVC), it is asynchronous and threaded, so a conversation could have a great number of participants, all of whom interact and contribute without any concern of turn-taking. Thus it offers a high level of concurrency.

The others note that often is the case that the greater the concurrency, the easier it is to get varying information and ideas, but that it is also more difficult for a group to focus, since there could be multiple conversations going on at once. Again, the OVC does not follow this situation, since the asynchronous structure allows many participants to contribute to and follow many threads; the medium actually invites it. It is important to note that this situation is not true concurrence in that it is not live, so the conversations are not actually occurring simultaneously. However, from an individual’s perspective, the conversations are interactively concurrent. This is to say, one can watch all of the videos in a single thread as they were posted (or in any order if need be), or one can move to another thread to experience and participate in a different conversation. In this way, this situation is beneficial in some ways, since one can select which conversation to participate in and the order in which to do so.

Considering these two media dimensions along with the inclusion of the other three, it is clear that a medium cannot be placed in a single-line hierarchy, such as with media richness, since there are multiple factors to consider. A medium may be superior in one area and offer less benefit in another. The authors expound on this point, noting three conclusions (51).

1. No one medium has the highest values on all dimensions.
2. Media are not monolithic. It is possible for one medium to possess different levels of a given communication dimension depending on how it is configured and used.
3. Ranking media in absolute terms is not practical.

I am always highly resistant to making a blanket determination that one theory may be better than another, as oppose to finding one more fitting for certain applications. However, media synchronicity theory seems to transcend the value of media richness theory in that it considers far more factors of a medium to determine its effectiveness to convey information, including the setting and purpose.