Media richness is defined as the media's capacities for carrying multiple cues and providing rapid feedback.
The richness of each medium involves a blend of several factors:
One factor is the speed of personalized feedback provided through the medium.
A second factor is the variety of cues and language provided through the medium. A cue is a stimulus, either consciously or unconsciously perceived, that results in a response by the receiver. Different media are combined with these two factors to determine media richness. Because these factors are on a continuum, a medium may vary somewhat in richness, depending on its use by the sender and receiver. Messages that require a long time to digest or that can't overcome biases are low in richness.
The text ranks face-to-face communication, voice mail and e-mails in descending order of media richness, but students raised on e-mail may have a different perspective.