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.
The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre Observe degree, priority and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, Office and custom, in all line of order.
William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602), Act I, scene 3, line 85.
To protect those who are not able to protect themselves is a duty which every one owes to society.
Lord Macnaghten, Jenoure v. Delmege (1890), 60 L. J. Rep. (N. S.) Q. B. 13; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 212.