The Impact of Media - Language Proficiency and Media Synchronicity Theory

The wide use of internet has shrunk the world from huge distances, different continents and the bordered barriers into the hands of a person who is capable and has the means and the resources to make use of it. Now professionals and investors can convene and converge at any time and from any place of he planet on the basis of their credentials and expertise on a particular problem, issue or project. There has been a problem with this facility and that is the language barrier between the qualified professional of different regions and countries. It is pertinent to the fact that a lot depends on the media and medium used for conference or symposium. While discussing any type of real-time conversation over the whether it be audio or video it is always ‘virtual’. While participating in any virtual conference, that too a synchronous one, people become more participative and comfortable when they meet the language proficiency levels of the other participants as well. It is quite natural that a more healthy and a comprehensive discussion will take place when all the participants are well

connected to the network, apt qualification and if the language of communication is same or some proper arrangements have been made. If a participant is not well acquainted with the language of majority of the participants, then he is singled out and it is very discouraging and embarrassing for the odd one and due to this barrier of communication his valuable input and ideas could be just missed and not taken as the possible solution to the problem under discussion. When some external sources are used for the purpose of translation to a particular participant like the use of a gadget or a device, any application or a software or any dedicated translator the conference becomes asynchronous. The effort to develop a more synchronous way of communications between the different participants of the virtual conference and the development of a specialized media so as to facilitate and instill a sense of satisfaction among the participants of a virtual conference is known as the Media Synchronicity Theory (MST).

MST distinguishes between synchronous channels, such as video conferencing, and asynchronous channels, such as e-mail. MST further contends to the two different parts or processes of the communication i.e. conveyance and convergence. Conveyance means the transmission of information from one team member to the other. Convergence on the other

hand allows a pool of information to visited by the team members back and forth. Conveyance can suffice with low level of synchrony as only an on-going interaction is required. On the other hand, convergence involves more complex and lengthy processes and thus require a higher degree of synchronization to enable a more effective communication. Modern communication technologies are characterized by the ease of communication, speed of transmission and the virtual social presence. Many studies have been conducted to analyse the effectiveness of the MST in the past but most of these focused on the communications in a cooperative context and not in non-cooperative context. Now as the technology is improving day-by-day but the study analysis of MST is not being done and kept up-to-date with the prevailing scenarios. Another aspect of a better development of communication channels is the provision and availability of resources, as availability of resources and their proper spending can be very beneficial and fruitful to the development of a more conducive and interactive platforms for communication.

The most common language of the business world is English. It is the language most widely used in the world. An added advantage of using English as lingua franca is that it has contributions from many cultures and regions of the world, making it more acceptable to the prevailing cultures of the world. It is also a fact that those people who are employed in the lower cadre of the job employment hierarchy are commonly less educated and have lesser understanding of the language of communication. There is a delay in understanding and relaying of the information. People who are less acquainted with the language of communication are supposed to take their time in order to assimilate the information contained in the communication. Such people also consider asynchronous communication more convenient for them as it is not real-time and gives the respondent ample time to assimilate the information contained in the communique. A sense of inclusion in the team is an integral part of satisfaction. Those who participate less in the discussion due to their lesser understanding of the language being used end up with a lesser interest in the project and gradually slide out of the team, as a result the team may lose one of the most capable members owing to the language barrier.

A study was conducted using the students of different universities of different countries. A virtual team simulation was created and the different teams provided the system assistance from the IBM and purpose was to assess the results of the simulated exercise on the basis of the data provided by the participants of the simulated exercise in the form of answers to the

standardized questionnaire. The questions asked were like what type of communication you preferred to use for information exchange, what type of communications you preferred to use to develop consensus, media used to communicate with teammates. The other set was based on the participants’ inclusion in the team and his satisfaction. The questions related to this segment were like the extent of inclusion in the teamwork, the extent of inclusion in decision making, receiving of the felicitations for the contributions to the teamwork, support received by the team members, your team communication when you were holding real-time communication, your team communication when you were holding written discussions etc. The results were very comforting and almost supported the theoretical work and provided the experimental accreditation to the theories.

The results showed that the people having lesser language proficiency prefer to use the asynchronous modes of communication and show more tendency towards the use of written communiques. The hypothesis can now be called a theory after the results of the experiment. However, there is one thing in the results which contradicts the theoretical statements. The results show that those less proficient with the language do not hesitate to use the synchronous media of communication and that is contrary to the MST theory. The results also show that the those who were proficient in the language of communication were also not hesitant to use asynchronous media of communication. Another good aspect of the frequent use of both synchronous and asynchronous communication was that it instilled a sense of inclusiveness and satisfaction among the team members. The results indicate that the ability to rehearse and reprocess the message is what lures those less proficient language wise.

We can come to a conclusion that the MST holds its grounds and the experiments reveal that the theory is substantive. The only glitch is the that those who are less proficient in speaking do not find it worrisome to communicate via synchronous means of communication. An important result of the experiment is the fact that the communication instills a feeling of inclusiveness and satisfaction in the participants or the teammates (in this case) whether it be synchronous or asynchronous. Rehearsability and reprocessability take an edge over the synchronous communications, as more people who are less proficient in language speaking are attracted towards it. This is also pertinent to the fact that those who are proficient in the language such the natives did not find the use of asynchronous communications as disturbing or unnecessary but they were more relaxed while using the synchronous modes of communication.