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.

Read more about Public.

Famous quotes containing the word public:

    When I saw it I was so glad I could not speak. My eyes seemed too little to see it all.... I was a long time without speaking to my friend. To see me always looking and never speaking he thought I had lost my mind. I could not understand where all this could come from.
    —For the State of Maine, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    The public easily confuses him who fishes in troubled waters with him who draws up water from the depths.
    Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)

    The public is a hibernating bear, hard to awaken and fond of honey.
    Mason Cooley (b. 1927)