Message Lab
This is a research tool that helps you decide what to say before you write a campaign. You use it when you are weighing how to approach a topic. It is marked Beta in the sidebar and is admin-only.
How to think about it
Section titled “How to think about it”The tool reads two things at once: what your volunteers have reported hearing in their groups, and what people are saying publicly about the topic. It writes back guidance and a few content ideas you can turn into a campaign. Its most useful trick is pointing out when those two sources disagree. The public conversation is loud but your own volunteers hear something different. Trust your volunteers’ reports as the ground truth and use the public side for context. Read its ideas as a draft to sharpen, not an answer to paste in.
It judges support and pushback from your organization’s stated stance, so keep Mission / stated stance in Settings current.
Run research
Section titled “Run research”- Open Message Lab.
- Enter a Topic. This is the only required field.
- Optionally pick a campaign under Tie to a campaign, or leave it on No campaign — exploratory research. Tying it to a campaign scopes the field reports to that campaign’s own messengers.
- Optionally add an Angle to steer which results matter most.
- Select Run research. On a session that already has results, the button reads Run again.
- Read Field reports, Public conversation, Framing guidance, and Content recommendations. Watch for the Signals disagree callout.
- On an exploratory run, a Campaign starter kit appears. Select Create draft campaign with this to turn it into a draft.
Select a section’s source count to open the audit drawer and read the underlying reports or public sources.