A recent Internet news article, “Want To Look Smarter? Stop Sending Emails And Speak Like A Human,” by Emily Peck, reminded me of the ways communication channels influence the meanings of messages. The principal communication channels fall into three general classes: visual (what we see), auditory (what we hear), and kinesthetic (touch, taste, smell, and emotional response). Although neither the article nor the study on which it is based specifically addresses the concept of channel richness, that is basically what the article is about.
Face-to-face (F2F) is considered the richest communication channel because it conveys the most information. Assuming all your sensory organs are functioning, you not only have the opportunity to hear the words and sentences others are saying, but also to observe tone of voice, gestures, facial expressions, and other indicators of meaning. Within a certain proximity, we might even be able to tell what others had for lunch, which may or may not be a good thing. All that information contributes to the richness of the communication. No other means of communication is as “rich” as F2F. High-quality video conferencing comes close, but even it lacks the “personal touch” of being able to shake the other person’s hand. Based on what we know about channel richness, it’s not surprising that the study found that a spoken message proved more persuasive than the same message in written form. My guess is that a video recording of the same message might have been perceived as even more persuasive than the oral alone, assuming that the nonverbal aspects of the video message were congruent. A person who verbalizes “yes” while shaking his or her head “no,” for example, may be perceived as incongruent.
If “richness” were the only thing that mattered, all communication would be F2F. “Richness” isn’t the only thing that counts, of course. It’s hard, for example, to communicate F2F with someone who is in a different location. That’s one of the reasons letters and postal systems were created. Efficiency and convenience are also important influencing factors, as is the frequent need for a “permanent” record. You can meet with someone, have a meaningful and important discussion, only to have him or her say a week later, “I never said that!” There are times having a record of who said what is essential. In recent years, we’ve seen numerous examples when video records made important contributions to criminal cases. If you’re caught on camera, it’s hard to say, “I wasn’t there….”
Another aspect of communication channels that needs to be considered is that the sender of a message isn’t the only person who will be using the channel. Receivers have their own channel preferences, and those preferences influence their interpretation of messages. Some people are good readers, for example, and are able to read at a much higher rate of speed than they could listen. Others are good listeners and can listen to compressed speech comfortably. And some people really like video because of the way it presents a combination of visual and auditory information. On the sending end, some people have really good keyboarding skills and can create a lot of text in a short time. For those whose keyboarding relies primarily “hunting and pecking” with one finger, creating a long document can be painful. For them, it would be much easier to telephone or record and send an oral message. Voice mail, however, may simply shift the burden of transcribing the message to the recipient. If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of a long voice mail message that needed to be transcribed, you know what I mean.
The above assumes that individuals have all their senses in good working order. Everything changes for those who are visually impaired or hearing challenged. Even when those who have sensory problems have equipment designed to facilitate communication, they may not be able to process information as quickly as someone without sensory problems. When it comes to the communication “dance,” it takes two to tango…. What do you know about those with whom you want to communicate? The Internet gives us a lot of communication options. I am writing this for an Internet publication with the assumption that you will read it.
Another factor that needs to be considered is the purpose of the information, not only from the sender’s perspective, but also from the perspective of the receiver. When I first log on (logon, login) to the Internet in the morning, I have two objectives: I want to see whether (a) I have received any email that needs attention and (b) what’s happened in the world since I logged off the day before. Because I’m a good reader, I want most of my information in written form. I will occasionally watch a video, but I watch only if the same story isn’t covered in written form. I rarely listen to podcasts. I know people, however, who rely on podcasts the same way I rely on textual information. I also know others to turn their TVs on first thing in the morning to catch the early-morning newscasts in video form.
Emily Peck’s article in the Huffington Post website (http://www.huffingtonpost.com) ends with a comment based on her conversation with Nick Eply, the author of the study mentioned previously. She says, “Taking his research to heart, Epley doesn’t have a smartphone, doesn’t text and definitely abhors Twitter.” I must admit that I’m not a big Twitter user, but I do read occasional posts, and it is obvious that a lot of people use it as one of their main forms of communication. I don’t send or receive text messages much, but I do occasionally and believe that texting is a useful adjunct to the communication process, primarily because it is quicker and (usually) briefer than an email message. I also love my smart phone (an Apple 1Phone 6+).
I’m also old enough to remember how TV was reviled as the “Boob Tube” when it first started gaining popularity, and I can remember when email was new and people were discovering the hazards of the “reply all” function. I can remember my older colleagues saying, “I don’t have an email address, and I don’t want one.” New channels of communication have probably always encountered some resistance, so it is easy to understand why texting and Twitter have been met with resistance.
My sense is that a bit of resistance is good, primarily because it will force new modes of communication to be better than they would otherwise be. One of these days, auto-correct on smart phones might actually become good enough that we won’t see Internet articles entitled, “Damn you, auto-correct.”
