Richness, power cues and email text

The paper presents a study that assesses the level of richness in electronic-mediated communication by taking into account its text-based attributes. Though a key feature of email, only limited research has focused on the text-based attributes of email messages. The underlying assumption is that there is an organisational context that intertwines with email message texts. The study explores the extent to which these attributes differ among senders at different organisational layers. Using textual and deconstruction analysis, it analysed a series of email messages distributed within two academic departments over a period of several months, and found that email, as a communication medium, signals rather than alleviates hierarchical differences. Therefore, even though email is often presented as a lean medium, the way text-based messages are constructed may convey the social cues that are traditionally used to determine status differences in organisations. The study argues that email is a richer communication medium than is reflected in the scale of information richness theory.