I will compensate for the lack of media richness by asking people to be patient in my social media. I think Media richness has the basic features to enhance communication, which are to simultaneously convey multiple personal cues, to receive immediate feedback, to use natural language, and to convey personal emotions. Social media can express natural language, but it’s hard to use the rest of the basic keys for communication. I always ask my friends to be patient when it comes to DM’s on social media because I turn off my notifications, and it’s hard to notice if I get messages from others. I also try to be patient if can’t get immediate feedback. I think that immediate response is impossible because other users are not always available to communicate with you. They have their schedules, and it’s important to respectively understand other user’s situations.
Another compensation is to understand the constraints in CMC. I believe that it’s very difficult to fully understand what people say on social media. Whenever I open my social media, I always see people arguing and framing each other’s statements. At the end, no one knows what they were talking about, and they struggle to understand each other. I have never experienced this situation because I’m always an observer. The reason why I’m not affected by those misinterpreted conversations is because I know that people can have a hard time interpreting their thoughts and ideas in the Internet. The lack of nonverbal communication cues and personal emotions could cause difficulties that aren’t a problem when using a face to face environment. I sometimes misunderstand what other users are saying but still try to understand constraints in CMC so that I don’t misjudge others. I always try to be respectful to other users on social media, and since I learned about CMC in this course, I start to be aware of the constraints, and it has helped my communication with others.