Action Alerts, p. 1
Online action alerts: Who is empowered to act?
,QWURGXFWLRQ
Public relations professionals work to develop relationships between organizations
and publics. These professionals have begun to focus on readdressing the definitions and
techniques of reaching publics. In recent years there has been a wave of new techniques,
research on public participation (i.e. stakeholders), and suggestions on how to effectively
engage these publics (Heath, 2001). Even with "publics" being the center of why public
relations professionals exist, a concrete definition of the public eludes many professionals in
this field as well as others outside the field of public relations (Vasquez & Taylor, 2001).
Vasquez and Taylor (2001) consolidated and mapped the major perspectives on the study of
publics from current research. One perspective has evolved from the social-psychological
disciplines to understand publics in regard to human relations and societal change.
The situational perspective (Grunig, 1989) focuses on grasping the "public" with the
inclusion of a broad scope of sociological concerns for human relations and societal change.
In the situational perspective, human relations are adaptive and societal change occurs
through debates over issues and public discussion (Vasquez & Taylor, 2001). Publics are
viewed as a social entity emerging through "spontaneous argument, discussion, and
collective opposition to some issue or problematic situation" in the context of a situation" (p.
142). Using the situational perspective, researchers and organizations had the ability to
design a message using the identification and segmentation of social-psychological
characteristics in order to address public concern. Presently, determining differences in
behavioral responses through identified variables segments a public, thereby predicting a
response to public concern. Social science professionals use the situational variables to
identify and target publics.
Page 1 of 27 
Convention