skip to main content
10.1145/3025453.3025934acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PageschiConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Be Me or Be Mii?: A Study of Self-Presentation and Interaction in the Miitomo Mobile Application

Published: 02 May 2017 Publication History

Abstract

In this study, we consider what Nintendo's widely downloaded Miitomo mobile application, which simultaneously promotes non-idealized self-fictionalization and authentic self-presentation, can suggest to us about self-presentation and technology design. Ten groups of four friends each (N=40), all novice users, engaged with Miitomo for one week, and completed supplementary pre- and post-use surveys. The data were analyzed to assess the extent to which participants' engagement in Miitomo reflected their "real life" selves and correlated with in-app and "real life" features, respectively. Although most participants believed that their behaviors within the app accurately reflected their "true selves," we found that in-app traits generally correlated more strongly with Miitomo engagement patterns than did users' "real life" traits and qualities. We discuss implications for social network and online community design, and propose future plans to study authenticity and self-distancing in online self-presentation.

References

[1]
Arthur Aron and Barbara Fraley. 1999. Relationship Closeness as Including Other in the Self: Cognitive Underpinnings and Measures. Social Cognition 17, 140--160. http://doi.org/10.1521/soco.1999.17.2.140
[2]
Mitja D Back, Juliane M Stopfer, Simine Vazire, et al. 2010. Facebook Profiles Reflect Actual Personality, Not Self-Idealization. Source: Psychological Science 21, 3: 372--374. http://doi.org/10.1177/0956797609360756
[3]
John A. Bargh, Katelyn Y. A. McKenna, and Grainne M. Fitzsimons. 2002. Can You See the Real Me? Activation and Expression of the "True Self" on the Internet. Journal of Social Issues 58, 1: 33--48. http://doi.org/10.1111/1540--4560.00247
[4]
Fabio Celli, Elia Bruni, and Bruno Lepri. 2014. Automatic Personality and Interaction Style Recognition from Facebook Profile Pictures. Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Multimedia - MM '14: 1101--1104. http://doi.org/10.1145/2647868.2654977
[5]
Youjeong Kim and S. Shyam Sundar. 2012. Visualizing ideal self vs. actual self through avatars: Impact on preventive health outcomes. Computers in Human Behavior 28, 4: 1356--1364. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2012.02.021
[6]
Kristine L. Nowak. 2013. Choosing Buddy Icons that look like me or represent my personality: Using Buddy Icons for social presence. Computers in Human Behavior 29, 4: 1456--1464. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2013.01.027
[7]
Bradley M. Okdie, Rosanna E. Guadagno, Frank J. Bernieri, Andrew L. Geers, and Amber R. MclarneyVesotski. 2011. Getting to know you: Face-to-face versus online interactions. Computers in Human Behavior 27, 1: 153--159. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2010.07.017
[8]
John P. Oliver and Sanjay Srivastava. 1999. Big Five Inventory (BFI). Handbook of personality: Theory and research 2: 102--138. http://doi.org/10.1525/fq.1998.51.4.04a00260
[9]
Joseph Schwartz. 2016. Trending US Apps- March 2016. Digital Vision.
[10]
Gwendolyn Seidman. 2013. Self-presentation and belonging on Facebook: How personality influences social media use and motivations. Personality and Individual Differences 54, 3: 402--407. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2012.10.009
[11]
Itoi Shigesato. 2016. Miitomo's Potential: Yoshio Sakamoto and Shigesato Itoi. Miitomo website. Retrieved from https://miitomo.com/en/talk/
[12]
Aaron Souppouris. 2016. Nintendo's "Miitomo" app passes 10 million users. Engadget.
[13]
Lawrence R. Wheeless. 1978. A Follow-Up Study of the Relationships Among Trust, Disclosure, and Interpersonal Solidarity. Human Communication Research 4, 2: 143--157. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.14682958.1978.tb00604.x
[14]
Monica T. Whitty. 2008. Revealing the "real" me, searching for the "actual" you: Presentations of self on an internet dating site. Computers in Human Behavior 24, 4: 1707--1723. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2007.07.002
[15]
D. Williams, T. L. M. Kennedy, and R. J. Moore. 2011. Behind the Avatar: The Patterns, Practices, and Functions of Role Playing in MMOs. Games and Culture 6: 171--200. http://doi.org/10.1177/1555412010364983
[16]
Nick Yee and Jeremy Bailenson. 2007. The proteus effect: The effect of transformed self-representation on behavior. Human Communication Research 33, 3: 271--290. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.14682958.2007.00299.x
[17]
Nick Yee and Jn Bailenson. 2006. Walk a mile in digital shoes: The impact of embodied perspectivetaking on the reduction of negative stereotyping in immersive virtual environments. Proceedings of PRESENCE: 147--156.
[18]
Miitomo | Nintendo. Retrieved from https://miitomo.com/en/talk/03.html
[19]
The rise and fall of Nintendo's Miitomo: Massive downloads don't mean success. Retrieved January 5, 2017 from http://venturebeat.com/2016/05/28/the-riseand-fall-of-nintendos-miitomo-massive-downloadsdont-mean-success/

Cited By

View all
  • (2022)Designing for Culturally Sensitive Cultural ChangeProceedings of the 2022 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3532106.3533512(599-611)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2022
  • (2022)Behind a Digital Mask: Users’ Subjective Experience of Animated Characters and Its Effect on Source CredibilityInteracting with Computers10.1093/iwc/iwab03033:5(499-510)Online publication date: 10-Feb-2022
  • (2018)Making Mii: studying the effects of methodological approaches and gaming contexts on avatar customizationBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2018.152696938:3(230-243)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2018

Index Terms

  1. Be Me or Be Mii?: A Study of Self-Presentation and Interaction in the Miitomo Mobile Application

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI '17: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    May 2017
    7138 pages
    ISBN:9781450346559
    DOI:10.1145/3025453
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

    Sponsors

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 02 May 2017

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. authenticity
    2. fantasy
    3. mobile application
    4. personality
    5. self-distancing
    6. self-presentation
    7. social networks

    Qualifiers

    • Research-article

    Conference

    CHI '17
    Sponsor:

    Acceptance Rates

    CHI '17 Paper Acceptance Rate 600 of 2,400 submissions, 25%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 6,199 of 26,314 submissions, 24%

    Upcoming Conference

    CHI 2025
    ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    April 26 - May 1, 2025
    Yokohama , Japan

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)28
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1
    Reflects downloads up to 13 Feb 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2022)Designing for Culturally Sensitive Cultural ChangeProceedings of the 2022 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3532106.3533512(599-611)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2022
    • (2022)Behind a Digital Mask: Users’ Subjective Experience of Animated Characters and Its Effect on Source CredibilityInteracting with Computers10.1093/iwc/iwab03033:5(499-510)Online publication date: 10-Feb-2022
    • (2018)Making Mii: studying the effects of methodological approaches and gaming contexts on avatar customizationBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2018.152696938:3(230-243)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2018

    View Options

    Login options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Figures

    Tables

    Media

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media