In this episode, messaging expert Anat Shenker-Osorio — a researcher, campaigner, author, and speaker — discusses the elements of an effective message, what’s required to spread messages, and the right way to test whether they’re working. We also get into the best way to craft climate messages and the current debate over “popularism.”Full transcript of Volts podcast featuring Anat Shenker-Osorio, December 20, 2021(PDF version)David Roberts:People involved with politics are obsessed with messaging: what to say, and how to say it, to sway voters or politicians to their side. Everyone has strong opinions about messaging, but almost everyone’s opinions are drawn from their personal experiences, preferences, and priors, which are rarely reliable guides to what works in practice. There are, however, people down in the trenches doing real message testing in the field, as part of real grassroots campaigns, like Anat Shenker-Osorio, head of ASO Communications and author of the book Don't Buy It: The Trouble with Talking Nonsense about the Economy. She helps campaigns communicate for a living, and she discusses the lessons learned from successful campaigns on her podcast Words to Win By. Shenker-Osorio is a co-founder of the Race-Class Narrative project, which is developing a coherent response to America’s familiar racial dog-whistle politics. She has advised several environmental campaigns and done a lot of thinking about the right way to message around climate change, as well as its place in the race-class narrative. As long-time readers know, I have a love-hate relationship with the subject of messaging, so I’m happy to dig in with Anat to figure out what we really know about good and bad message testing, the elements of a good message, how to actually get messages to voters, and how to talk about climate change in a compelling way. Without further ado, welcome, Anat, to Volts. Thanks for coming on.Anat Shenker-Osorio:  Thanks for having me.David Roberts:   I'm excited to talk about messaging. I want to start with a distinction. The side of messaging that people think about most often is word selection: choosing your words, slogans, catchphrases, and verbiage for your ads. But the other side of messaging is about the infrastructure that allows you to get the messages you've developed to voters: the spokespeople, institutions, media outlets, social media pages, civic groups, all the mechanisms that allow those messages to reach their intended audience. It's always seemed to me that it is on this latter side of messaging where the left is really getting its ass kicked. It seems like the right has a robust ecosystem that's very coordinated and capable. If they have a new message — you know, “Critical race theory is taking over schools” — they can get that to the ears and eyes of every single conservative in the country basically at will. The left, it seems to me, lacks that ability. What does it need to do to build that kind of infrastructure? Anat Shenker-Osorio:  There are so many ways into this question. First, of course, I agree with you. That's something that I have remarked upon myself, frequently: A message nobody hears is, by definition, not persuasive. It doesn't matter how fancy your survey or RCT or field test, everything that you did to create that thing: If nobody hears it, it didn't persuade them. I think it is too simple a distinction to put those things in two buckets, and here's why. Part of the problem we have is, if your base won't carry the message, then the middle isn't going to hear it. Yes, it would be amazing to have an actual functional media that would properly do its job. Yes, it would be amazing to have a left-wing specialized media infrastructure of the size and capability of Fox News and OAN and conservative talk radio and all the rest of it. Yes, those would all be great things to have, and we would be much, much better off. But we do have the knowledge that a message is like a baton that needs to be passe