Communication Theories Assignment PDF

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Communication
Theories
Punzalan, R.
Realubit, F.
Recto, R.
Refugio, C.
Salvador, J.
Samson. J.
Ms. Maychell B. Jastia, CHASS.
November 10, 2020

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Introduction
As we are currently living in the 21 st century, almost everything got
modernized. From infrastructures to technological devices and even to our
way of living has been changed and continuously changing. We adapt easily
to the developments that happened for the reason that we need it to
survive. One factor of humanity that affects us the most is communication.
Since then, humans use this process to be able to pass messages to one
another that became new learning for all of us. Trillions of knowledges have
been passed down from our fallen history to our current society which helps
us build a new.
Most of the time, we, people do not know how we achieve such
“almost” perfect way of communicating. Lots of researches were done and
maybe currently on going for us to have a better understanding on how
communication works. It may seem an easy topic for us but once you try to
evaluate it from its core, you will realize that there’s a lot of thing you didn’t
know.
In this book, we would like to present you some theories that helped
our society to shape our communication process.

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Communication
Theories
Punzalan, R.
Realubit, F.
Recto, R.
Refugio, C.
Salvador, J.
Samson. J.
Ms. Maychell B. Jastia, CHASS.
November 10, 2020

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Table of Contents
Media Richness Theory 5-7
Argumentation Theory 8-11
Conversation Theory 12-13
Contagion Theory 14-16
Mood Management Theory 17-20
Theory of Digital Divide 21-23
Acknowledgement 24-25
References 26-28

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Richard L. Daft, Vanderbilt University.
Media Richness Theory, Richard Bergin.
Robert H. Lengel, Leader Work.
Media Richness Theory, campus-adr.net.
Media Richness Theory Punzalan
Back in 1984, two organizational scholars named Richard L. Daft and
Robert H. Lengel introduced a theory called Media Richness Theory also
known as Information Richness Theory. It became popular with the help
of electronic communication media such as emails and
telephones. The original MRT
(Daft and Lengel, 1984, 1986)
suggested that organizations need a
correct channel for the information
to be transmitted with the
avoidance of possible complications such as
uncertainty and equivocality. Every medium does have different levels of
richness that may affect the deliverance of messages. Later in 1987, Linda
Trevino continued studying this theory.
Many learning materials were published regarding this study and
narrowed the whole explanation. To simplify, this theory determines the
capability of media to transport information without much distortion.
The more that the message is prone to misunderstanding, the richer the
media should be. According to the theory, every media does have different
levels of richness in the information that they bring. Daft and Langel
presented a diagram to understand how it affects the communication
process. A media can be recognized as rich if they can deliver such a
message with much understanding and lean if they convey information
with poor comprehension. According to Shepherd and Martz (2006),
rich media is used to support increased communication in online
forums and an enhanced understanding of equivocal tasks. As for Sun and

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Cheng (2007), lean media is helpful to support less equivocal fact-
based learning.
The richness of media can be judged by four main factors that usually
affect the way we communicate through media or face to face.
• Cues
- Mostly known as signal and in form of richness, it can be visual or
auditory.
• Feedback
- The faster feedback you receive, the more effective
communication you have.
• Focus
- People tend to lose focus in technological conversation than face
to face since it makes you attentive in every word and gesture.
• Language Variety
- It refers to the different meanings that can be interpreted.
Chris Drew explained in his article the strengths and weaknesses of this
theory such as:
Strengths:
• The theory is very beneficial for understanding which media are
best for which tasks. You don’t always want a rich media text,
especially if you want to communicate something without any debate
or discussion.
• The four criteria for analyzing the richness of media make it a very
practical theory. Anyone can classify and rank media based on the
four criteria provided.
• The theory acknowledges communication can be uni-directional,
unlike linear theories of media communication (such as Lasswell’s
model) which only account for one-way media communication.
Weaknesses:
• The theory was developed before Web 2.0 technologies, and
therefore may not be as useful for modern technology studies are
required to see whether the theory is of value today.
• The theory would not give anyone a definitive answer about
which media to use in which circumstance. Rather, it provides a
framework for making that decision for yourself.