Public

Public

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. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the Öffentlichkeit or public sphere. 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. Although it has definitions in the theory of the field that have been formulated from the early 20th century onwards, it has suffered in 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.

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Famous quotes containing the word public:

    “Here also was made the novelty ‘Chestnut Bell’ which enjoyed unusual popularity during the gay nineties when every dandy jauntily wore one of the tiny bells on the lapel of his coat, and rang it whenever a story-teller offered a ‘chestnut.’”
    —Administration for the State of Con, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    “[In government] the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other—that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights.”
    —James Madison (1751–1836)

    “The extravagant expenditure of public money is an evil not to be measured by the value of that money to the people who are taxed for it.”
    —Chester A. Arthur (1829–1886)