What are Publics?

Robert W. Gehl

Don't hesitate to ask questions, or stop me at any point!

A screenshot of Cody Francis's Annual Review of Anthropology article, 'Publics and Politics'

Francis Cody’s definition of “publics: political subjects that know themselves and act by means of mass-mediated communication.”

Introduction

Cody is writing from the perspective of anthropology. What do anthropologists focus on?

Publics are a mass phenomenon. Can anthropology help with large-scale human practices?

There’s a paradox in the definition of publics (political subjects that know themselves and act by means of mass-mediated communication).
What's the paradox?

Do you act because you have agency to make choices? Or are you acted upon by the ideas of others?

Mass-Mediated Political Subjects

The cover of Habermas's The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
An engraving called 'discussing the war in a Paris cafe'

Does this remind you of anything we’ve talked about in class so far?

Four men reading a newspaper in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Carey's discussion of reading the news
An engraving called 'discussing the war in a Paris cafe'

“These are furthermore taken to be modes of communication in which the social position of those involved is secondary to the logical quality of the argument put forth.” (Cody, 39)

What does that mean?

The cover of Benedict Anderson's book Imagined Communities
The cover of Benedict Anderson's book Imagined Communities

“The mass circulation of texts in the form of printed books and newspapers is what created the very conditions under which such an abstract assembly of strangers could understand themselves to be acting collectively.” (Cody, 39)

Does that remind you of anything we've discussed?

A map of Via Eastern Telegraph cable connections
Transmission: communication for control of space

Cody notes that this is a secular phenomenon. What does that mean?

“Publics forge their own legitimacy through the medium of common discourse, without having to refer to a transcendent form of sovereignty from without, and this element of agency is precisely what is so attractive about publics for theories of political emancipation, be they liberal, nationalist, or radical.” (Cody, 39)

A picture of protesters holding a sign that says 'No Kings'

The story so far: this is about the construction of a big formation, The Public, The Nation, through mass media, particularly print media

Privates, Crowds, Counter-publics

The term "public sphere" implies something else: a private sphere. What is that?

Drawing Room of the Plas. Spa
An engraving called 'discussing the war in a Paris cafe'
Drawing Room of the Plas. Spa

What's the difference between "the public" and a crowd?

A crowded train platform in Sao Paolo

The crowd: “driven by excessive, embodied passion making it more prone to manipulative suggestion and violence.” (Cody, 41)

What are "counterpublics"?

An antifascist protest in the UK
Not the public sphere of the cafe, but a counterpublic in the street

Review of this section

  • People start to point out alternative/oppositional terms to Public: the private sphere, crowds, counterpublics.
  • When examining the idea of The Public, it starts to break down: there is no one Public, but multiple different groupings.
  • Any grouping requires exclusions.

Publicity as Communicative Effect

How would you create a public?

the back rows of a conference room, where the chairs are mostly empty
Speaking to an empty room...
a still of an ad for a product. it says, 'join the flavor revolution.'
...or an empty call to join a 'movement'
A sculpture, seeming of a figure lying down, called 'Horizontal Ambiguity'
'Horizontal Ambiguity', by Alan Thornhill

Review of this section

  • We’re further breaking down the idea that there’s a simple Public that is created through media messages.
  • There are many different ways of reading a media message, and this can help create many different Publics.

Contradictions of Publicity

The cover of Habermas's The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
An engraving called 'discussing the war in a Paris cafe'

If we think of a "marketplace of ideas," how would we think about communication?

The logos of several digital streaming services, such as Netflix and Disney+
Communication as a marketplace

If we think of "public opinion," how would we think about communication?

Opinion polls for the 2025 Canadian federal election
Debate as a yes/no proposition
a screenshot of the SecureDrop system
What needs to be public? What needs to stay secret?
The Vatican's Collegium Urbanum de Propaganda Fide
A return to more public religious expression
a march for trans rights in the UK
The personal is the political

Reviewing this section

  • The public sphere is a contested space!
  • It can be captured by the market.
  • It can be undermined through participation in individual channels of expression (e.g., opinion polls, digital media).
  • Those that were marginalized by the classical liberal Public Sphere idea are pushing back (people who had been colonized, religious groups, sexual minorities)

Alternative Delineations

We started out by talking about the 'scale' of anthropology, and the need to scale up the study of human action. What scales do we need to consider today?

a crowd, with a banner that says 'the whole world is watching'
Global publics? Hyperpublics?
a crowd in Nepal watching as a government building burns
And yet things are always local, too

Reviewing this section

  • Globalization and digital media have shifted the focus of The Public or Publics to a global scale, with a whole range of ways that people could gather themselves into groups of political subjects that know themselves and act by means of mass media.

Conclusion

What people are studying:

  • how publics create political messages for broader public circulation
  • how 'The Public' continues to exclude various groups of people
  • how communication technologies are used by publics

Francis Cody’s definition of “publics: political subjects that know themselves and act by means of mass-mediated communication.”

What are Publics?

Robert W. Gehl