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Publics

Wikipedia contributorsAdapted for Fathomly · View authors
1 min read
Source updated July 6, 2026

Publics are small groups of people who follow one or more particular issue very closely. They are well informed about the issue(s) and also have a very strong opinion on it/them. They tend to know more about politics than the average person, and, therefore, exert more influence, because these people care so deeply about their cause(s) that they donate a lot of time and money. Therefore, politicians are unlikely be reelected by not pleasing the publics while in office.

01Issue publics

Issue publics are groups of people who pay attention to one particular issue. One can be part of more than one issue public. So called "passionate publics" can also shape markets and the perceptions of different products, as seen in the discursive shaping of market categories by reviewers of whiskey products.

The term was introduced by Philip Converse in The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics (1964). He defined it in contrast to mass public.

02Attentive publics

Attentive publics are groups of people who pay attention to several particular issues.

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Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Publics”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

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