THE CONCEPT OF “PUBLIC” IN THE HISTORY OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION STUDIES: FROM THE MASS PUBLIC TO THE “ACTOR” PUBLIC (English version)

The issue of active publics and the question of the “construction” of publics are relatively recent in communication sciences. After the initial stage, in which “mass” communication was conceived as addressing a public that was unitary, massified, passive and, therefore, possible to influence by “targeted” messages, the opinions on the public began to be diversified and nuanced under the influence of literary theories, of cultural studies and of what later on became known as “reception studies.”Therefore, from this “mass public ”we arrived at the concept of “publics”. However,in some studies, the mere existence of these publics is being questioned. In this paper, we will provide details on the history of public-related theories, particularly the public-as-spectator, which later became public-as-audience and then public-as-actor. The paper will also show how, from theories on reactive publics, we arrived, by the transformation of television and the emergence of new information and communication technologies (IT&C), to seeing publics as proactive following the media effort of building this structure.