Media and Group Cohesion: Relative Influences on Social Presence, Task Participation, and Group Consensus

Pg 373 – “group members from the focal task. Olson et al. (1995) found that groups communicating with both video and audio channels spent less time stating and clarifying issues when compared with groups communicating with audio only.”

~ So, basically, this can be extrapolated to the fact that we communicate better through both visual and auditory senses. This also works with the way that culture is transmitted. Culture habits and the personal identities of those within a culture are more similar if the members of the culture communicate through both auditory and visual means rather than just auditory means.

Pg 374 – “together, these studies point out that social factors such as cohesion and familiarity among group members can significantly influence the way group members perceive communication media.”

~ I see “cohesion and familiarity among group members” as being a culture. So, basically culture influences the way people perceive media. But, interesting that one can rephrase culture in being a cohesive, familiar group.

Pg 383 – “We found that group cohesion influenced the group members’ perceptions of communication media in established groups, a finding that supports the social construction perspective. We also found that group cohesion did not reduce the absolute direct influence of media condition over social influence. This finding supports the media- dependent perspective. Furthermore, the influence of group cohesion over social presence appears to be additive-rather than substitutive-to that of media condition.”

~ Need to research social construction perspective.

Yoo, Y., Alavi, M. (2001). Media and group cohesion: Relative influences on social presence, task participation, and group consensus. MIS Quarterly, 25(3). Retrieved November 9, 2008, from JSTOR database.