Social presence is influenced by the intimacy (interpersonal
vs.mediated) and immediacy (asynchronous
vs. synchronous) of themedium, and can be expected
to be lower for mediated (e.g., telephone conversation)
than interpersonal (e.g., face-to-face discussion)
and for asynchronous (e.g., e-mail) than
synchronous (e.g., live chat) communications. The
higher the social presence, the larger the social
influence that the communication partners have on
each other's behavior. Closely related to the idea of
social presence is the concept of media richness.
Media richness theory (Daft & Lengel, 1986) is based
on the assumption that the goal of any communication
is the resolution of ambiguity and the reduction
of uncertainty. It states that media differ in the
degree of richness they possess--that is, the amount
of information they allow to be transmitted in a given
time interval--and that therefore some media are
more effective than others in resolving ambiguity and
uncertainty. Applied to the context of Social Media,
we assume that a first classification can be made
based on the richness of the medium and the degree
of social presence it allows.
With respect to the social