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In
public relations
Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. P ...
and
communication science
Communication studies or communication science is an academic discipline that deals with processes of human communication and behavior, patterns of communication in interpersonal relationships, social interactions and communication in different ...
, publics are groups of individual
people
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...
, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the
sociological
Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation and ...
concept of the ''Öffentlichkeit'' or
public sphere
The public sphere (german: Öffentlichkeit) is an area in social life where individuals can come together to freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action. A "Public" is "of or concerning the ...
. The concept of a public has also been defined in
political science
Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...
,
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
,
marketing
Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...
, and advertising. In public relations and communication science, it is one of the more ambiguous concepts in the field. Although it has definitions in the theory of the field that have been formulated from the early 20th century onwards, and suffered more recent years from being blurred, as a result of conflation of the idea of a public with the notions of audience, market segment, community, constituency, and stakeholder.
Etymology and definitions
The name "public" originates with the
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
''
publicus'' (also ''
poplicus''), from ''
populus'', to the English word '
populace
Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world. Governments typically quantify the size of the resident population within their jurisdiction using a ...
', and in general denotes some mass population ("the people") in association with some matter of common interest. So in political science and history, a public is a population of individuals in association with civic affairs, or affairs of office or state. In social psychology, marketing, and public relations, a public has a more situational definition.
John Dewey
John Dewey (; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the f ...
defined public as a group of people who, in facing a similar problem, recognize it and organize themselves to address it. Dewey's definition of a public is thus situational: people organized about a situation. Built upon this situational definition of a public is the
situational theory of publics {{short description, Theory
The situational theory of publics'' theorizes that large groups of people can be divided into smaller groups based on the extent to which they are aware of a problem and the extent to which they do something about the pro ...
by
James E. Grunig
James E. Grunig (born April 18, 1942) is a public relations theorist, Professor Emeritus for the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland.Curriculum vita, University of Maryland Accessed July 16, 2017
Biography
Grunig was born ...
, which talks of ''nonpublics'' (who have no problem), ''latent publics'' (who have a problem), ''aware publics'' (who recognize that they have a problem), and ''active publics'' (who do something about their problem).
In public relations and communication theory, a public is distinct from a
stakeholder or a
market
Market is a term used to describe concepts such as:
*Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand
*Market economy
*Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market
Geography
*Märket, an ...
. A public is a subset of the set of stakeholders for an organization, that comprises those people concerned with a specific issue. Whilst a market has an exchange relationship with an organization, and is usually a passive entity that is created by the organization, a public does not necessarily have an exchange relationship, and is both self-creating and self-organizing. Publics are targeted by public relations efforts. In this, ''target publics'' are those publics whose involvement is necessary for achieving organization goals; ''intervening publics'' are opinion formers and mediators, who pass information to the target publics; and ''influentials'' are publics that the target publics turn to for consultation, whose value judgements are influential upon how a target public will judge any public relations material. The public is often targeted especially in regard to political agendas as their vote is necessary in order to further the progression of the cause. As seen in Massachusetts between 2003 and 2004, it was necessary to "win a critical mass of states and a critical mass of public support" in order to get same-sex marriage passed in the commonwealth.
Public relations theory perspectives on publics are situational, per Dewey and Grunig; mass, where a public is simply viewed as a population of individuals; agenda-building, where a public is viewed as a condition of political involvement that is not transitory; and "''
homo narrans
''Homo narrans'' ('storytelling human') is one of a number of binomial names for the human species modelled on the commonly used term ''Homo sapiens'' ('wise human'). The term posits the primacy of storytelling over, for example, language or reason ...
''", where a public is (in the words of Gabriel M. Vasquez, assistant professor in the School of Communication at the
University of Houston
The University of Houston (UH) is a public research university in Houston, Texas. Founded in 1927, UH is a member of the University of Houston System and the university in Texas with over 47,000 students. Its campus, which is primarily in s ...
) a collection of "individuals that develop a group consciousness around a problematic situation and act to solve the problematic situations" . Public schools are often under controversy for their "agenda-building," especially in debates over whether to teach a religious or secular curriculum.
The promotion of an agenda is commonplace whenever one is in a public environment, but schools have exceptional power in that regard. In the public school system, it is the responsibility of those within the system to determine what agenda is being promoted.
One non-situational concept of a public is that of Kirk Hallahan, professor at
Colorado State University, who defines a public as "a group of people who relate to an organization, who demonstrate varying degrees of activity—passivity, and who might (or might not) interact with others concerning their relationship with the organization".
Samuel Mateus's 2011 paper "Public as Social Experience" considered to view the concept by an alternative point of view: the public "is neither a simple audience constituted by media consumers nor just a rational-critical agency of a Public Sphere". He argued "the concept should also be seen in the light of a publicness principle, beyond a critic and manipulative publicity (...). In accordance, the public may be regarded as the result of the social activities made by individuals sharing symbolic representations and common emotions in publicness. Seen with lower-case, the concept is a set of subjectivities who look publicly for a feeling of belonging. So, in this perspective, the public is still a fundamental notion to social life although in a different manner in comparison to 18th century Public Sphere's Public. He means above all the social textures and configurations where successive layers of social experience are built up."
The general public also sets social norms which causes people to express themselves in socially acceptable manners. Although this is present within every community, this is often especially applicable within the transgender community as they feel the need to "perform" to a certain set of expectations to be seen as their true gender.
Social publics
Social publics are groups of people united by common ideas, ideology, or hobbies. Networked publics are social publics which have been socially restructured by the networking of technologies. As such, they are simultaneously both (1) the space constructed through networked technologies and (2) the imagined collective which consequently emerges as a result of the intersection of human
persons
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...
, shared technologies, and their practices.
See also
*
Community
A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, tow ...
*
Nation
A nation is a community of people formed on the basis of a combination of shared features such as language, history, ethnicity, culture and/or society. A nation is thus the collective identity of a group of people understood as defined by those ...
*
People
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...
*
Public sphere
The public sphere (german: Öffentlichkeit) is an area in social life where individuals can come together to freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action. A "Public" is "of or concerning the ...
*
Res publica
*
Volk
The German noun ''Volk'' () translates to people,
both uncountable in the sense of ''people'' as in a crowd, and countable (plural ''Völker'') in the sense of '' a people'' as in an ethnic group or nation (compare the English term '' folk ...
References
Bibliography
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Further reading
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Hannay, Alastair (2005) ''On the Public'' Routledge
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Kierkegaard, Søren (2002) ''A Literary Review''; Alastair Hannay (trans.) London: Penguin
*
Lippmann, Walter. ''The Phantom Public'' (Library of Conservative Thought), Transaction Publishers; Reprint edition, January 1, 1993, .
* Mayhew, Leon H. ''The New Public: Professional Communication and the Means of Social Influence'', (Cambridge Cultural Social Studies), Cambridge University Press, September 28, 1997, .
*
Sennett, Richard. ''The Fall of Public Man''. W. W. Norton & Company; Reissue edition, June 1992, .
* {{ISSN, 2191-4990
Communication
Public relations
Sociological terminology
Political science
Marketing