The Public Spaces Incubator (PSI) is a first-ever collaborative project between multiple public service media (PSM) organizations – CBC/Radio-Canada, RTBF (Belgium), SRG SSR (Switzerland) and ZDF (Germany) – and the US-based nonprofit R&D lab, New_ Public. Launched in 2022, the PSI has since welcomed ARD (Germany), ARTE (Germany/France), ABC (Australia), and public media in the Netherlands to the collaboration.
What problem is PSI addressing?
Public service media organisations are dedicated to serving their audiences with trusted news and information, entertainment and cultural programming. They are public-interest and mission-driven institutions that reflect their societies, protect and promote their unique cultures and democratic life, and bring people together. Over the past two decades as public conversation has grown dramatically in digital spaces, PSMs have been confronted with the increasing challenge of toxic online comments and have been forced to shut down comments on their own and operated websites or to outsource online conversations to third-party social media platforms.
Today, online discourse is dominated by large social media platforms owned by private, for-profit corporations, such as Facebook, TikTok and X/Twitter. These platforms promote polarization and fuel toxic interactions, with harmful outcomes for mental health, civil society and democratic life. In a concerted effort to confront these harms, PSMs are now coming together, across borders, languages, and cultures, to once again innovate and bring people together online, just as they have done on broadcast media throughout the world.
In an effort to re-engage with citizens and provide alternatives to private social media platforms, PSMs have joined forces to research, design and develop for better interactive conversational spaces. The goal of the Public Spaces Incubator is to completely reimagine the conventional comment sections of news websites from the ground up, with a focus on supporting and amplifying real conversation and connection. The outcome will be a suite of modular and customizable conversational tools which will be deployed by each PSM partner and New_Public. The PSI toolkit will also be open-sourced and released for maximum influence and effect.
Civility by Design: The Public Spaces Incubator | White Paper
July 2025
A White Paper detailing the original mission of the PSI, a progress report on the initial period of work between June 2023 and March 2025 and key learnings, plus with funding secured until 2027, what will happen next.
Members
*The Public Media Alliance (PMA) proudly hosts the PSI project website. ABC, RTBF, CBC/Radio-Canada, SRG SSR and ZDF are members of PMA. New_ Public is the facilitating partner of PSI.
Discover the story behind the PSI on PMA’s podcast, Media Uncovered.
Over a hundred prototypes have been designed by the team at the Public Spaces Incubator. Of these, about a dozen have been coded, which are now being tested in public and private betas on PSM platforms in Europe and Canada. Check out some of the prototypes below.
Comments Slider
Comments Slider visualizes comments along a spectrum, and allows users to position themselves and explore the perspectives of others with this affordance. Based on responses, this UX offers another layer of active facilitation: encouraging comments where there are few, and identifying common ground across the spectrum.
Representing Perspectives
This prototype allows journalists to identify what perspectives they’d like to hear from in a conversation. Users can self-identify with these perspectives when they write a comment. After all perspectives are included, a visualization provides some analysis of the perspectives.
Text & videos provided by New_ Public
How to get involved
The consortium is actively seeking other public media who are interested in testing the tools or contributing to the work. Please contact psi@cbc.ca for more information.
The Public Spaces Incubator: Civility by design
3 December 2025
PMA: Six public media and one nonprofit R&D lab are embarking on a groundbreaking initiative: to provide online spaces safe for civil debate.
How discussion in the ZDFspaces works
21 July 2025
ZDF: The ZDFspaces are intended to promote constructive discussions among users. You can find out exactly how this works here.
Public Spaces Incubator announces two-year partnership extension and addition of Australian and German public broadcasters ABC and ARD
9 October 2024
CBC/Radio-Canada: CBC/Radio-Canada, RTBF (Belgium), SRG SSR (Switzerland), and ZDF (Germany), today announced the two-year extension of their Public Spaces Incubator partnership to 2027, and welcomed the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and Germany’s ARD to the project.
re:publica 2024: Strengthening European Media and the Public Sphere (Watch)
28 May 2024
re:publica: Our conversations online are dominated by US tech companies whose rules and algorithms are intransparent. The panel discusses how cooperation within the Public Spaces Incubator may help to face the US platforms’ competition in civic discourse respecting of Public Service Media’s rules and values.
Public broadcasters collaborate to reclaim online public spaces with creation of “Public Spaces Incubator”
8 February 2023
CBC/Radio-Canada: Public broadcasters CBC/Radio-Canada, RTBF (Belgium), SRG SSR (Switzerland) and ZDF (Germany) are joining forces to explore new ways for public service media to support citizen engagement and democratic discourse.
Featured image: Men and women group, speech bubble talk. People crowd voice, blogging. Message noise, Network Connect Idea. Vector Abstract Background. Social Media communication, discussion, concept. Overlay color. Credit: Hilch / Shutterstock.com