Adopting Just Another Digital Assistant or Establishing Social Interactions with a New Friend?

Abstract

Social interactions have been exclusive to human-human interactions, until recently. However, modern technologies with adaptive and intelligent features such as smart speakers imitate human social characteristics and appear to be allegedly social interaction partners. Research going beyond the analysis of mere usage and conceptualizing devices as interaction partners is rare, also because studying the establishment of social interactions would require analyses over time. The present paper addresses this research desideratum and introduces a concept of a longitudinal study which involves the collection of different data types from different sources (online questionnaire, providers’ log files, interview) and interdisciplinary data analytical methods (social science, data science). Its cross-sectional and longitudinal research questions ask for the adoption and the usage of the usage of smart speakers, for the establishment of social interactions with the device. In sum, this study contributes to the research area by presenting a conceptual research model, which provides a framework for the systematic long-term analysis of both the adoption of technology over time as well as the establishment of potential social interactions.