TITLE:
Media Choice in Times of Uncertainty —Media Richness Theory in Context of Media Choice in Times of Political and Economic Crisis
AUTHORS:
Rashad Mammadov
KEYWORDS:
Visual Perception, Electronic Media, Media Richness Theory, Media Choice, Crisis, Greece
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Journalism and Communication,
Vol.10 No.2,
April
21,
2022
ABSTRACT: What drives the audience’s choice of media is one of
the most studied topics in mass communication research. Both academia and field
professionals benefit from the studies that cast light on this fundamental
issue. However, there is a lack of attention to interdisciplinary approaches.
The purpose of this study is to implement Media Richness Theory (MRT), rarely
used in mass communication research to address the issues, which otherwise
would remain unexplained since none of the existing mass communication theories
combine factors such as a crisis situation, visual richness of media content
and media choice of audience simultaneously.
Findings of multivariate analysis of variances applied to survey data
from the European Social Survey support the researchers’ hypotheses that during
the political and economic crisis in Greece, the assumptions of MRT explained
the changes in audience’s behavior towards a decrease in visually “lean” in
favor of using visually “rich” media.