Project Background

Who We Are

PSI -- Public Spaces Incubator -- is an international project of four public media broadcasters plus a non-profit specializing in digital public spaces:

The common goal is to build and test interaction features that foster healthy conversation in digital spaces owned by public broadcasters. These features aim to serve real user and societal needs, and to help rebuild trust in Public Service Media (PSM).

What We Are Building

PSI is a modular toolkit for creating pro-social online conversation spaces. It is designed around a plugin architecture where:

• Structures define types of interactive content (Questions, Topics, Profiles, Articles)
• Features extend structures with functionality (comment sliders, moderation, reactions, polls)
• Silos partition data per partner, each with its own configuration, language, and enabled features

The toolkit is intentionally not tailored to a single broadcaster's system. Adaptation to individual PSM platforms happens through configuration, custom SSO integration, and partner-contributed "open modules."

Open-Source and Federated

The PSI software is open source under the Apache License 2.0. Due to the international nature of the project, a federated approach is used:

• Each partner can deploy their own instance (via Firebase or Docker)
• Partners share the same codebase but configure their own silos
• Partners can contribute "open modules" that others may adopt
• Core modules are maintained by the PSI core team; open modules by the contributing partner

Key Milestones

Further Reading

• PSI Product Repository -- the main codebase
• Architecture Overview -- C4 system landscape
• Terminology -- key terms used in the project