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Communication Research
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Bridging the Gap Between Media Synchronicity and Task Performance

Effects of Media Characteristics on Process Variables and Task Performance Indicators in an Information Pooling Task

Stefan Münzer

University of Saarland

Torsten Holmer

University of Applied Sciences

The study examines effects of media synchronicity in a group problem-solving task. The media characteristics of parallelism, immediacy of feedback, and reprocessability are varied within text-based computer-mediated communication. The hidden profile task requires groups to exchange unshared pieces of information and to integrate them. Contrary to expectations, asynchronous media characteristics do not support the production of unshared information. Furthermore, asynchronous media characteristics result in higher engagement in integrating information during discussion. Asynchronous media characteristics decrease the coherence of the discourse and increase the mental effort of the participants. Since coherence and mental effort indicate that asynchronous media characteristics impede the information integration process, the higher engagement in information integration is interpreted as compensatory effort.

Key Words: computer-mediated communication • information pooling • hidden profile • coherence • mental effort • media synchronicity

This version was published on February 1, 2009

Communication Research, Vol. 36, No. 1, 76-103 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0093650208326464
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