Publicity

Publicity has at least three distinct meanings. Although initially they appear unrelated, closer study will reveal a number of underlying connections between them. That underlying consistency of meaning might best be summed up as the condition of being, or being made public. In perhaps its most common usage, publicity refers to acts in or toward the mass media distributing promotional, advertising or self-advancing information directed at drawing attention to or informing widespread mass publics about something. E.g., "Jon Mueller and the Widget Mfg. Co. both seek publicity as a means of furthering their own ends." In this sense, publicity has many of the grammatical characteristics of a gerund referring both to the act of publicizing something and to the information used to publicize. Publicity in this sense is a major preoccupation or concern of the modern practice of public relations.

In two other senses, publicity refers more to conditions or qualities associated with something being public. In an older (largely pre-democratic) sense, publicity refers to a quality of governmental, legislative or other acts of state. E.g., one of the characteristics shared by all public laws can be termed their publicity. In its broadest, philosophical, sense publicity is sometimes used (notably by John Rawls and other English-language Kantians) in roughly the sense of "publicness". E.g., "one of the foremost concerns of civil rights and public goods is their publicity."