This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (September 2009)

This page duplicates a dictionary definition already listed on Wiktionary. Its dictionary counterpart can be found at either Wiktionary:Transwiki:Public or Wiktionary:Public. Is this page still needed in Wikipedia? Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Please either: Turn it into an encyclopedia article and remove this notice. Tag it for deletion. Use {{subst:prod}} Replace it by a soft redirect. Use {{wi}} {{subst:longcomment}} Flag it to merge it with another article. Use {{mergeto|article named here}}

This article is missing citations or needs footnotes. Please help add inline citations to guard against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies. (July 2007)

Look up public or general public in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Public, adj, is of or pertaining to the people; relating to, or affecting, a nation, state, or community; opposed to private; as, the public treasury, a road or lake. Public, n, is also defined as the people of a nation not affiliated with the government of that nation.

Public to the general body of mankind or of a nation, state, or community; the people, indefinitely; as, the public; also, a particular body or aggretion of people; as, an author's public. "Public network" means a network that is regulated as a common carrier.

Aggens (1983) in the paper titled "Identifying different levels of public interest in participation" states: "There is no single public, but different levels of public based on differing levels of interest and ability".

[edit] Selected bibliography

1. Dewey, John. Public & Its Problems, Swallow Press, June 1954, ISBN 0-8040-0254-1.
2. Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought), The MIT Press; Reprint edition, August 28, 1991, ISBN 0-262-58108-6.
3. Habermas, Jürgen. The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 2: Lifeword and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason, Thomas McCarthy (Translator), Beacon Press; Reprint edition, 1987, ISBN 0-8070-1401-X.
4. Hannay, Alastair. On the Public, Routledge; 1 edition, July 13, 2005, ISBN 0-415-32792-X.
5. Kierkegaard, Soren. A Literary Review (Penguin Classics), Alastair Hannay (Translator), Penguin Classics, March 26, 2002, ISBN 0-14-044801-2.
6. Lippmann, Walter. The Phantom Public (Library of Conservative Thought), Transaction Publishers; Reprint edition, January 1, 1993, ISBN 1-56000-677-3.
7. Mayhew, Leon H. The New Public: Professional Communication and the Means of Social Influence, (Cambridge Cultural Social Studies), Cambridge University Press, September 28, 1997, ISBN 0-521-48493-6.
8. Sennett, Richard. The Fall of Public Man W. W. Norton & Company; Reissue edition, June 1992, ISBN 0-393-30879-0.

[edit] See also