PUBLICITY
The term *pubblicità* is used in two distinct senses: 1) as a tool for public oversight of governmental activities or the management of large industrial enterprises; 2) as a technique for directing the needs and decisions of the public regarding individuals, political and social institutions, and major commercial firms.
### I. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY CONTACTS
Publicity exists wherever there is a public—that is, in large societies. To understand this, one must recall the distinction made by sociologists between primary and secondary social contacts. Primary social contacts are those formed within a more or less narrow and defined community (family, neighborhood, municipality) and encompass human life in its entirety. These contacts shape the customs and traditions of the collective. The public, however, is an assembly of individuals without structure (i.e., outside their primary community of life) facing a group that is politically or economically organized. This group depends on the public, but the public also depends on it in turn. The contact between the public and such a group, specialized in a social function, does not arise from continuous communal life but through specific acts that provoke an attitude of acceptance or rejection according to the public’s dispositions. These social contacts are called secondary. The principal tool of such contacts is publicity.
At the same time, the contact established by publicity has a character of conscious control. The public faces certain individuals or a group on whom it depends for its vital needs, yet maintains a certain distance in discussing their actions or forming opinions about them. Customs do not descend from above but emerge slowly and spontaneously through the adaptation of a living community to the conditions of social life. Public opinion (v. PUBLIC OPINION), however, is always the result of discussion and taking a stance regarding facts arising from the management of public affairs. Consequently, publicity is a tool of public opinion. Its task is not to transform habits or customs but to inform the public or impose a fashion upon it—that is, to direct needs in the direction of production.
Public oversight through publicity thus operates in two ways. The public demands publicity because it believes that through it, it can determine its own adherence to the social actions of the government and that its demands direct the economic mechanism. In a sense, this is true. One cannot govern for long against the will of the subjects, and production fails if it does not correspond to public needs. Thus, through publicity, the public exercises control over its leaders, secures improvements in social conditions by exploiting existing ones for its own purposes, and can protest against abuses by officials or politicians. Likewise, it is through publicity that the public itself is swayed into exceptional sacrifices, such as special contributions and especially in times of war.
Public opinion therefore possesses an incontestable force: but only organized and directed public opinion wields this power. Hence, it is of extreme importance for all those who must deal with the dominant public to shape opinion and direct it in their favor. Thus, publicity, which is a means of controlling the actions of leaders, becomes a tool for the public to control itself. The public agrees with those individuals and groups occupying a special social position if publicity is directed by them; it disagrees if publicity is directed by opposing elements.
### II. TECHNIQUES OF PUBLICITY
All means that reach the public, whether in part or as a whole, can be considered techniques of publicity. In modern conditions, the following hold primacy: the press (newspapers and magazines), official or semi-official publications by bodies that influence the public, publications of scientific research on economic and social conditions, statistics, official documents justifying the intentions of publicity, posters and simple inscriptions in public spaces, radio broadcasting, mass demonstrations, and so forth.
Publicity can be open or clandestine. The means of clandestine publicity include underground press, radio broadcasts of information and announcements, the spread of news, and even humorous inventions disseminated among the public, which can be incredibly powerful, especially in oppressive totalitarian regimes.
### PUBLICITY — PUBLICANS
Commercial publicity primarily aims to create fashion by introducing ever-new needs, which in turn create distinctions within uniform demands. Advertising must persuade the public that a common article possesses qualities different from others and thus corresponds to special needs, thereby guaranteeing demand for II.
It can therefore be said that publicity is a means of social contact to provoke an attitude of approval or rejection by the public toward individuals or institutions that hold a direct position in society.
### III. MORAL EVALUATION
The moral evaluation of publicity follows from the fact that it is a means of forming public opinion. “Public opinion,” as Pius XII stated in his address of February 18, 1950, “is the patrimony of every normal society... Where no manifestation of public opinion exists, one should recognize a deficiency, an infirmity, a sickness of social life.” Now, publicity, as a means of public opinion, is necessary and good insofar as it provokes attitudes conforming to true social principles or draws attention to the true needs of man and production. It is reprehensible when it excites disordered or subversive demands. Consequently, in certain circumstances, publicity must be subject to a measure of control by society organized socially and economically.
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