What is your messaging data used for? While many users do not often think about the information companies can gather based off of their messaging platform of choice, it is nonetheless important to consider as society increasingly relies on short-form electronic communication. While most companies keep their data closely guarded, inaccessible to users or potential hackers, Apple has opened a door to their walled-garden ecosystem, providing iMessage users on Mac with one file storing all their messages and attached metadata. With knowledge of this locally stored file, the question now becomes: What can our data do for us? In the creation of our iMessage text message analyzer, we set out to answer five main research questions focusing on topic modeling, response times, reluctance scoring, and sentiment analysis. This paper uses our exploratory data to show how these questions can be answered using our analyzer and its potential in future studies on iMessage data.

翻译：您的消息数据被用于何种用途？尽管许多用户不常思考基于其选择的通讯平台企业可收集的信息，但随着社会日益依赖短格式电子通信，这一问题仍值得关注。多数公司将数据严密保护，使用户或潜在黑客无法访问，而苹果公司则为其封闭生态系统打开了一扇门：为Mac端的iMessage用户提供了一个存储所有消息及附属元数据的文件。在获知此本地存储文件后，问题转变为：我们的数据能为我们做什么？在构建iMessage短信分析器的过程中，我们致力于回答五个核心研究问题，聚焦于话题建模、响应时间、回避倾向评分及情感分析。本文通过探索性数据展示如何利用该分析器解答这些问题，并探讨其在未来iMessage数据研究中的潜力。