Give Dewey Back His Publics! How Pr Co-Opted Publics—And How to Reclaim Them

Abstract

This paper critically reexamines the foundational concept of “publics” in public relations (PR) theory, tracing its roots to John Dewey’s pragmatist political philosophy and diagnosing its transformation into a functionalist, managerial approach. While publics remain central to PR discourse, their conceptualization has become increasingly disconnected from Dewey-based interdisciplinary debates on democracy, issue formation, and public participation, particularly in political philosophy and science and technology studies (STS). The paper argues that PR theory has systematically co-opted Dewey’s issue-centered publics through a threefold process of reduction, repurposing, and remiss. In response, it introduces the stakeholder–publics model, which distinguishes strategic stakeholders from emergent publics to recover the democratic, epistemological, and ontological dimensions of public formation, and proposes three pathways for integrating this reconceptualization into both theory and practice. This model reframes public relations not merely as an organizational function but as a site of democratic inquiry and institutional accountability. By reconnecting PR theory to Dewey’s intellectual legacy and situating it within contemporary socio-political challenges—such as institutional distrust, rising authoritarianism, and the privatization of public decision-making—this paper offers a renewed foundation for conceptualizing publics. In doing so, it contributes to renewing the field’s relevance at a time when rethinking the socio-political roles of organizations is increasingly urgent.

Keywords: John Dewey, socio-political issues, publics, stakeholders, co-optation, democracy