How Push-To-Talk Makes Talk Less Pushy

TL;DR

This study explores how push-to-talk radios influence communication styles among college students, revealing reduced interactional commitment and enabling diverse conversation patterns like intermittent talk, which are uncommon in audio communication.

Contribution

It provides new insights into how push-to-talk radios facilitate less pushy and more flexible interactions, expanding understanding of audio communication dynamics.

Findings

Push-to-talk radios reduce interactional commitment.

Intermittent conversation is common with push-to-talk.

Design implications for flexible communication are discussed.

Abstract

This paper presents an exploratory study of college-age students using two-way, push-to-talk cellular radios. We describe the observed and reported use of cellular radio by the participants. We discuss how the half-duplex, lightweight cellular radio communication was associated with reduced interactional commitment, which meant the cellular radios could be used for a wide range of conversation styles. One such style, intermittent conversation, is characterized by response delays. Intermittent conversation is surprising in an audio medium, since it is typically associated with textual media such as instant messaging. We present design implications of our findings.