View source for Public

{{short description|Grouping of individual people}}
{{redirect-multi|2|The Public|General public|other uses|Public (disambiguation)|the band|General Public}}
{{Multiple issues|
{{confusing|date=March 2018}}
{{POV|date=September 2020}}
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[[File:La Foule illuminee 03.jpg|thumb|right|300px|The diverse public is symbolized in this sculpture situated in Montreal, Canada named "{{Interlanguage link|La Foule illumin%C3%A9e|fr}}".]]
In [[public relations]] and [[communication science]], '''publics''' are groups of individual [[people]], and '''the public''' (a.k.a. '''the general public''') is the totality of such groupings.{{sfn|Heath|2005|pp=707}}{{sfn|Rawlins|Bowen|2005|pp=718}} This is a different concept to the [[sociology|sociological]] concept of the ''Öffentlichkeit'' or [[public sphere]].{{sfn|Heath|2005|pp=707}} The concept of a public has also been defined in [[political science]], [[psychology]], [[marketing]], and advertising.  In public relations and communication science, it is one of the more ambiguous concepts in the field.{{sfn|Vasquez|Taylor|2001|pp=139}} 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.{{sfn|Jahanzsoozi|2006|pp=65}}

==Etymology and definitions==
The name "public" originates with the [[Latin]] ''[[wikt:publicus#Latin|publicus]]'' (also ''[[wikt:poplicus#Latin|poplicus]]''), from ''[[wikt:populus#Latin|populus]]'',  to the English word '[[populace]]', 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.{{sfn|Vasquez|Taylor|2001|pp=140}} [[John Dewey]] defined {{harv|Dewey|1927}} 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]] by [[James E. Grunig]] {{harv|Grunig|1983}}, 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).{{sfn|Rawlins|Bowen|2005|pp=720&ndash;721}}{{sfn|Toth|2006|pp=506&ndash;507}}

In public relations and communication theory, a public is distinct from a [[Stakeholder (corporate)|stakeholder]] or a [[Market (economics)|market]]. 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, public does not necessarily have an exchange relationship, and is both self-creating and self-organizing.{{sfn|Rawlins|Bowen|2005|pp=721}} 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.{{sfn|Rawlins|Bowen|2005|pp=720&ndash;721}} 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.<ref>{{cite web |date=November 16, 2013 |url=https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/16/massachusetts-gay-marriage_n_4288726.html |title=A Decade After Massachusetts' Landmark Gay Marriage Ruling, The Gains Are Clear |author=Denise Lavote |website=Huff Post Politics |access-date=2013-11-17 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131119130016/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/16/massachusetts-gay-marriage_n_4288726.html |archive-date=2013-11-19 }}</ref>

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]]''", where a public is (in the words of Gabriel M. Vasquez, assistant professor in the School of Communication at the [[University of Houston]]) a collection of "individuals that develop a group consciousness around a problematic situation and act to solve the problematic situations" {{harv|Vasquez|1993|pp=209}}.{{sfn|Vasquez|Taylor|2001|pp=140}}{{sfn|Jahanzsoozi|2006|pp=65}} Public schools are often under controversy for their "agenda-building," especially in debates over whether to teach a religious or secular curriculum.<ref name=":0">{{cite web |work=The New York Times Magazine |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html |title=How Christian Were the Founders? |first=Russell |last=Shorto |date=February 11, 2010 |access-date=May 6, 2018 |via=NYTimes.com |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171230005639/http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html |archive-date=December 30, 2017}}</ref>  The promotion of an agenda is commonplace whenever one is in a public environment, but schools have exceptional power in that regard.

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&mdash;passivity, and who might (or might not) interact with others concerning their relationship with the organization".{{sfn|Jahanzsoozi|2006|pp=65}}

Samuel Mateus's 2011 paper "Public as Social Experience"{{Undue weight inline|date=January 2016}} 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."<ref>{{cite journal |last=Mateus |first=Samuel |year=2011 |title=The Public as Social Experience |journal=Comunicação e Sociedade |volume=19 |pages=275–286 |doi=10.17231/comsoc.19(2011).911 |url=https://www.academia.edu/3248817|doi-access=free |hdl=10400.13/2917 |hdl-access=free }}</ref>

==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]], shared technologies, and their practices.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://networkedpublics.org/ |title=Networked Publics |last=Varnelis |first=Kazys |publisher=[[MIT Press]] |date=October 31, 2008 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170610172912/http://networkedpublics.org/ |archive-date=June 10, 2017 }}</ref>

==See also==
*[[Community]]
*[[Nation]]
*[[People]]
*[[Public sphere]]
*[[Res publica]]
*[[Volk]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

===Bibliography===
{{refbegin}}
* {{cite encyclopaedia|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of public relations|volume=2|editor1-first=Robert Lawrence|editor1-last=Heath|publisher=SAGE|date=2005|isbn=978-0-7619-2733-4|article=Public sphere (Öffentlichkeit)}}
* {{cite book|title=Public relations: critical debates and contemporary practice|editor1-first=Jacquie|editor1-last=L'Etang|editor2-first=Magda|editor2-last=Pieczka|publisher=Routledge|year=2006|isbn=978-0-8058-4618-8|chapter=Relationships, Transparency, and Evaluation: The Implications for Public Relations|first=Julia|last=Jahanzsoozi}}
* {{cite encyclopaedia|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of public relations|volume=2|editor1-first=Robert Lawrence|editor1-last=Heath|publisher=SAGE|date=2005|isbn=978-0-7619-2733-4|article=Publics|first1=Brad L.|last1=Rawlins|first2=Shannon A.|last2=Bowen}}
* {{cite book|chapter=Building Public Affairs Theory|first=Elizabeth L.|last=Toth|author-link=Elizabeth Toth|title=Public relations theory II|series=LEA's communication series|editor1-first=Carl H.|editor1-last=Botan|editor2-first=Vincent|editor2-last=Hazleton|publisher=Routledge|year=2006|isbn=978-0-8058-3384-3}}
* {{cite book|title=Handbook of public relations|editor1-first=Robert Lawrence|editor1-last=Heath|editor2-first=Gabriel M.|editor2-last=Vasquez|publisher=SAGE|year=2001|isbn=978-0-7619-1286-6|chapter=Research perspectives on "the Public"|first1=Gabriel M.|last1=Vasquez|first2=Maureen|last2=Taylor|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/handbookofpublic0000unse}}
{{refend}}

==Further reading==
{{wikiquote|The Public}}
{{Wiktionary|public|general public}}

* {{cite book|author-link=John Dewey|first=John|last=Dewey|year=1927|title=The Public and Its Problems|location=Chicago|publisher=Swallow Press}}
* {{cite book |author-link=James E. Grunig|first=James E.|last=Grunig|year=1983|title=Communications behaviours and attitudes of environmental publics: Two studies|series=Journalism Monographs|volume=81|publisher=Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Publications}}
* {{cite journal|first=Gabriel M.|last=Vasquez|title=A Homo Narrans Paradigm for Public Relations: Combining Bormann's Symbolic Convergence Theory and Grunig's Situational Theory of Publics|journal=Journal of Public Relations Research|volume=5|year=1993|issue=3|pages=201&ndash;216|doi=10.1207/s1532754xjprr0503_03}}
* [[Alastair Hannay|Hannay, Alastair]] (2005) ''On the Public'' Routledge {{ISBN|0-415-32792-X}}
* [[Søren Kierkegaard|Kierkegaard, Søren]] (2002) ''A Literary Review''; Alastair Hannay (trans.) London: Penguin {{ISBN|0-14-044801-2}}
* [[Walter Lippmann|Lippmann, Walter]]. ''The Phantom Public'' (Library of Conservative Thought), Transaction Publishers; Reprint edition, January 1, 1993, {{ISBN|1-56000-677-3}}.
* Mayhew, Leon H. ''The New Public: Professional Communication and the Means of Social Influence'', (Cambridge Cultural Social Studies), Cambridge University Press, September 28, 1997, {{ISBN|0-521-48493-6}}.
* [[Richard Sennett|Sennett, Richard]]. ''The Fall of Public Man''. W. W. Norton & Company; Reissue edition, June 1992, {{ISBN|0-393-30879-0}}.
* {{cite book |first=Jan-Felix|last=Schrape|year=2021|title=Platformization, Pluralization, Synthetization: Public Communication in the Digital Age|series=Research Contributions to Organizational Sociology and Innovation Studies|volume=21-02|url=https://www.sowi.uni-stuttgart.de/dokumente/forschung/soi/soi_2021_2.Schrape.Platformization.Pluralization.Synthetization.pdf|issn=2191-4990}}

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[[Category:Human communication]]
[[Category:Public relations]]
[[Category:Sociological terminology]]
[[Category:Political science]]
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