INSIGHT
Re-building Public Conversation
29 July 2026
Former CEO and President of CBC/Radio-Canada, Catherine Tait, looks at the effort from public broadcasters to create meaningful and safe public discourse through the Public Spaces Incubator, what it means for other public institutions, and moving forwards, how pro-social principles and values should define public media’s relationship with Big Tech.
By Catherine Tait, Expert-in-Residence, New_ Public
As the former President and CEO of Canada’s public broadcaster, CBC/Radio-Canada (2018-2025), my primary focus for close to seven years was how to maintain and grow public support at home for our coast-to-coast-to-coast news, information and entertainment services delivered in English, French and eight Indigenous languages. Today, I’m mostly focused on how to make sure that the public service principles that have been the underpinning of public broadcasting for decades are more squarely adopted and enshrined in digital environments.
When the U.S. government eliminated federal support for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 2025 – direct hits to PBS and NPR – it felt like a deathblow to a public utility, a public good, that all of us in the public service arena should mourn. But, as worrisome as these cuts to funding are – not just in the U.S. but to public service media worldwide – more troubling has been the steady decline in audiences, especially younger listeners and viewers, to legacy and public media over the past two decades.
Read more: How the Public Spaces Incubator is building civic engagement
COVID didn’t help. While the impact of stay-at-home pandemic edicts contributed to meaningful lifts in public media’s total digital audiences, it masked the march of the young to alternative services like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and many others. COVID super-charged the mass exodus of younger consumers to the more alluring feeds of information and entertainment on social media and other online destinations. The pull of bite-sized, snappy content delivered and consumed in virtual togetherness – an uninterrupted stream, designed for maximum engagement, optimal data extraction was simply irresistible.
During this same period, all traditional broadcasters noticed an accompanying rise in toxic comments on our digital sites – racism, misogyny, homophobia, antisemitism, islamophobia – you name the hate, we saw the rants. As the costs of moderation surpassed millions of dollars at CBC/Radio-Canada, we felt a responsibility to protect our audiences, and so, we decided to shut down our comments sections. Many of our public service media colleagues around the globe did the same. And yet it seemed like a counter-intuitive move. As public service organizations with a mandate to serve our populations in an open, respectful and responsive manner, how could we simply shut down our direct line of communication with audiences?
How can we reimagine public service media more broadly in an open social media environment? As entrepreneurs innovate new forms of social media on open, interoperable protocols, I think that public media should be at the forefront of these efforts.
It felt like a double jeopardy for democracy that public broadcasting aims to hold up: the deterioration of public discourse on our digital services and the loss of our future audiences to other platforms.
So, when Eli Pariser – of MoveOn, “The Filter Bubble”, and now New_ Public, a nonprofit product studio – pitched me the idea of exploring ways to make online conversations “safe again,” it seemed like a no-brainer. We enlisted close colleagues at three other public broadcasters (RTBF Belgium, SRG SSR Switzerland and ZDF Germany) and embarked on the creation of the Public Spaces Incubator (PSI) – the first ever digital collaboration between multiple public media partners. Our goal was to join forces, and with the guidance of New_ Public, we would build tools to support citizen engagement and democratic discourse in our respective online environments. Our collective focus was on how to buildhealthier, alternative digital spaces through public service media and not those platforms controlled by US Big Tech.
That was early 2023. Since then, PSI has expanded its ranks to include ARD Germany and ARTE and is well-advanced in rolling out a toolkit of digital products that support inclusive exchanges, encourage diverse viewpoints and promote greater empathy and understanding, without suppressing perspectives or ideas.
What is the Public Spaces Incubator? Listen to our podcast with two of its founders.
The PSI Toolkit in Action
Each broadcaster involved has implemented tests of the toolkit in ways that make sense for their audiences. But the operating principle is the same: how do we encourage respectful conversations online? And if we do so, can we deepen audience engagement? We know that in today’s world of online creators, users – especially younger users – are looking for more authentic connection with their sources of information – be they influencers, creators or journalists.
After many test cases, it is exciting to witness how the PSI Toolkit has a real impact not only on the quality of online conversations, but also in the many ways the product design teases out more nuanced perspectives in online exchanges. Where journalists or news desks have embraced the PSI tools, the results are impressive. Audience members demonstrate curiosity and clearly appreciate the access and proximity to journalists. The PSI tools have been designed with automated moderation functions, so the burden on human moderators is reduced. Finally, conversations can outlast a single article and, in fact, can occur across multiple articles, TV programs or radio shows.
Proximity to Journalists
After a period of research and prototyping with the PSI public media partners and focus groups that included younger audience members, the team settled on a handful of tools to implement. In each instance, the online conversation associated with an article or radio/tv content is anchored in a question, rather than the presentation of a blank or open space for ‘free-for-all’ comments.
For example, a Radio-Canada journalist poses a question related to a news story regarding a public inquiry into egregious administrative failures and overspending in a digital transformation program at Quebec’s Motor Vehicles Insurance Agency (SAAQ). The question – “What do you think about the SAAQ situation?“ elicits numerous comments and observations from audience members. The strong topicality of the subject combined with a dedicated expert journalist who responded to the majority of the questions resulted in a high quality exchange, free from insults and toxicity. Interestingly, this PSI instance was compared with an adjacent third-party moderation company’s comments section on the same subject. The out-sourced moderation service’s comments tended to be shorter and more negative than the PSI discussion.
The journalist, Jean-Francois Theriault, considered that the PSI toolkit allowed him to enrich his coverage, go deeper in response to real citizens’ concerns, and actually explore new avenues of investigation raised by users. Theriault even produced a subsequent explainer video to provide the audience greater clarity on the complexity and stakes involved in the SAAQ inquiry.
Higher Quality Conversations
In Belgium, RTBF launched a conversation series alongside its show “Let’s Talk About Solutions” to invite viewers/listeners to engage on topics of civic interest such as employment, housing and commuting. RTBF poses the question, “Is your car indispensable?” and the audience responds with a wide range of points of view on the challenges of public transportation. By framing the conversation with a question, the audience is primed to respond thoughtfully rather than to simply express their feelings of frustration or even hostility regarding the issue.
In most cases, the broadcasters utilize multiple entry points into a conversation, from a button saying “Join the Conversation” in multiple online articles, or QR codes on TV shows which point to a live PSI conversation. Users can upvote questions they’d like answered; they can situate their position on a “comments slider” which offers a scale rather than a binary choice on a particular issue; or they can participate in a poll on an issue. The goal is the same: higher quality conversation, more nuanced and respectful conversation.
Perhaps the most touching example of the PSI toolkit in action was a public conversation that occurred during the Artemis II lunar space mission earlier this spring. Audience members of Radio-Canada were invited to ask their questions regarding the mission and a variety of leading journalists from the public broadcaster answered them. Over 1200 audience members participated and the question from 10-year-old Beatrice was the most memorable: Beatrice wanted to know where the door in the lunar capsule was located. She wondered how the astronauts would be able to leave the capsule when they landed back on earth. The Radio-Canada journalist described the exact location of the exit and how it would be used when the astronauts came home.
As a believer in public service media as an underpinning of our democracy, this exchange between a 10-year-old and her public broadcaster provokes a heart-swelling moment of optimism. For years we have heard that younger audiences have abandoned legacy media for social media feeds rife with misinformation. The Reuters Institute report on how the majority of younger audiences find their news and information – mostly on social media platforms – is chilling for career journalists trained in the principles of trustworthy and accountable newsgathering and reporting. But if Beatrice has joined the conversation about an important global news event on her local public media platform, then not all is lost!
There is no doubt that healthy democracies depend on open and safe public debate, free from violence and hate. The work of New_ Public and its partner public broadcasters is important because the research that informs the product design of the PSI tools responds to a real world problem: how do we reverse the decline of healthy public conversations in digital spaces? And how do we build new muscle in our journalism and news organizations to engage audiences, younger audiences, in civil online exchange?
In fact, in my opinion, I would go one step further: how can we integrate these PSI tools on the platforms of other traditional media organizations as well as other public institutions (libraries, museums, government agencies, universities)? All public institutions are struggling to connect with the public and to engage in healthy and productive online conversations with their constituents. To date, the PSI toolkit has been tested on sites that the public media partners own and operate. I think that the next milestone is to imagine how to ensure that it is available more broadly through an open-source solution.
And, to push the conversation further: how can we reimagine public service media more broadly in an open social media environment? As entrepreneurs innovate new forms of social media on open, interoperable protocols, I think that public media should be at the forefront of these efforts. The opportunity is not in building a new Meta or fixing X, it is in ensuring a meaningful presence for public service media on alternative open social media platforms such as Bluesky, Eurosky or Gander. If the next generation of news and information consumers has already left legacy public media, rather than deploying resources in the Sisyphean task of trying to get them back, should we not think about how to ensure that alternative open social media platforms adopt public media principles? In fact, should we not insist that our public media – along with their pro-social principles – serve audiences on social media platforms that are not Big Tech captives?
That’s why it was heartening to see ZDF, one of our PSI partners in Germany, sponsor the Open Social Awards which celebrated developers working on alternative open social products and platforms. As the world turns away in horror at the degraded experience of the social platforms that were supposed to democratize the world, introducing public media to a new open pro-social web would be a welcome solution.
If you’re interested in learning more about the PSI tools, please contact the team at New_ Public at hello@newpublic.org or psi@cbc.ca.
About the author
A transformative leader in media and entertainment, Catherine Tait has spent over three decades shaping how audiences engage with news, information, and storytelling. In 2018, she made history as the first woman to serve as President and CEO of Canada’s public broadcaster, guiding CBC/Radio-Canada through major digital transformation, leading cultural change in Indigenous, Equity & Inclusion practices and policies, and founding the Global Task Force for Public Media. Catherine currently serves as Expert-in-Residence to New_Public, a team of community leaders, researchers, engineers and designers working together to create new digital public spaces where people can thrive and connect. She is also an Advisor to Gander, Canada’s first sovereign open social media service.
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