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Kelly Harris

Fredrik deBoer

WRT 303

February 14, 2011

Public Writing: A Definition through Tiers

Nate is infuriated when his university fails to de-ice the walkways and expresses his

concerns and proposed solutions in a public blog. Jenny is also frustrated by this issue and upon

seeing Nate¶s blog decides to write a letter to the university¶s newspaper. It is clear that these are

acts of writing, but are they acts of public writing? Many would categorize them as public

writing without a second thought, while others protest that they are not. Despite its initial

simplistic appearance, public writing has a multifaceted definition which must be broken down

into tiers of meaning.

In its broadest sense, I define public writing as writing where the author¶s intent is to

reach a widespread group of people, raise awareness of an issue, and evoke change. As such, it

can be said that public writing is a sequential process. The public must first be given unrestricted

access to the document before it can proceed to raise awareness or result in change. It is

impossible for people to be inspired by a piece of public writing if they do not know it exists.

Along the same lines, the desire to change or resolve a problem cannot be fulfilled until one is

made aware that it is a problem. The validity of this sequential definition is bolstered through its

congruency to the four steps of public writing stated by Fredrik deBoer: Attention, Inclusion,

Discussion, and Action.

According to the AIDA model, the goals of public writing can be achieved through

following the four aforementioned steps. First, a public writing document must be paid attention

to by its audience, or at the very least have the potential for attention. This can include something

from reading an open blog to listening to a publicized speech. Inclusion, the next step, is a

crucial factor as the audience will typically only care to act in response to the issues if they view

themselves as a part of the group affected by the issue. However, the inclusion does not need to

be direct. A man can still be included amongst women¶s rights advocacy groups despite the fact

he is not a female if he feels wronged by how his female loved ones are mistreated. The next step

toward reaching public writing¶s ultimate goal is to spark discussion about the problem or issue.

This leads others to form their own opinions based upon what was said in the document and

discuss said opinion with others. This discussion helps to spread awareness of the issue to an

even larger audience until the final step and ultimate goal, action, is attained. Action represents

the resolving of a problem by those with the power to do so. The action could be instantaneous

and direct, such as successfully convincing a school board member to reverse their personal

decision to cut the music department budget. The action could also be a bit delayed and indirect,

such as convincing a senator for the state legislature to put a proposal to repave and fix the local

interstate on the agenda to be voted on. In both cases, the desired action was achieved. However,

this illustrates how different types of public writing can have slightly different results, goals, and

purposes.

Politically-driven public writing adheres to the broad definition, but is specifically

intended to change policy, laws, or the perspectives of those with political influence. As such,

this illustrates that political public writing tends to adhere to the top-down approach. In a top-

down approach to government, and society in general, decisions are made by those at the top and
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then implemented throughout the ³ranks´ below. Through public writing such as letters and signs

while protesting, citizens can beseech legislators to attend to and fix their issue. The key phrase

in that sentence is ³beseech legislators´. Political public writing must go about changing things

indirectly. The ultimate power to change laws and policies lies solely within legislators and the

political hierarchy.

Activist public writing also follows the broad definition, but is intended to raise

awareness and create change on the local, national, or global level, depending upon the goals of

the organization. Activist types of public writing can come in a plethora of forms, including

pamphlets, speeches, and blog posts. Unlike political writing, activist writing can succeed from a

bottom-up approach. In a bottom-up approach, change is made by piecing together the collective

actions made by the many at the bottom of the political/social hierarchy. Thus, the author can

directly make a change through their writing alone, not requiring the assistance of a third party.

For example, someone could post a blog concerning the lack of recycling on college campuses.

If posted in a public forum, students can read that blog, become aware of the issue and directly

change their behavior to not only recycle more frequently, but also discuss it with others and

continue to spread the notion to others. Despite the fact that political and activist writing have

their differences, they both share a trait that is common of every subdivision of public writing:

Intent.

A personal diary post voicing concerns about cyber bullying toward to GLBT community

is leaked and openly posted onto the internet. Thousands of people read the post, become aware

of the issue, and act to stop cyber bullying from occurring. Is this diary post public writing?

While the issue is open for debate, I do not believe it is. It was not the author¶s intent for the post

to become public but rather simply a private expression of emotion. For a text to be considered
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public writing, the author must intend to inspire change, not simply have change happen through

circumstance. This grey area of intent can further be explored when analyzing the situation of

Anne Frank. During the holocaust, she kept her diary solely intending to express her own

thoughts and refused to let anyone else read it. It wasn¶t until the composition of the diary was

finished and the war was over that Anne chose to publish her diary. This text follows the AIDA

model just like any other successful piece of public writing. However, as her initial intent was

private expression, the diary of Anne Frank falls under the category of non-fiction, not public

writing. The debate over initial intent blurs the boundaries when defining public writing, but the

issue of inclusion presents a more extensive definitional issue.

As previously mentioned, inclusion plays a large role in defining whether or not

something is public writing and how many people are exposed to the document. When analyzed

from a global perspective, inclusion is largely subjective upon how large of a scale one bases the

overall group. If looking only at the United States, inclusion issues of gender and socio-

economic class top the long list of those who may be excluded from feeling connected to a piece

of public writing. However, in our world that is dominated by notions of globalization, one must

consider the overall group to include more than just the United States. This is when one runs into

the significant issue of language barriers. An absolutely brilliant essay critiquing the European

Union could be written in Sweden, but for the majority of the world it could not get past the first

step of AIDA. If one doesn¶t understand Swedish, that text means literally nothing to them. It¶s

simply a jumbled assortment of various symbols²nothing that can get attention, never mind

raise awareness or inspire change. The text could be translated, but in most cases, the nuances of

writing are lost when translated. It¶s nuance, word choice, and literary techniques that often

make a piece of writing effective and inspiring. This illustrates the point that something can be
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highly effective public writing in one region of the globe, but not even qualify as public writing

in another as it holds no meaning or clout with that specific audience.

Having broken down the tiers of definition within public writing, as well identifying

common definitional issues, one is still left with grey areas. One bone of contention lies within

social networking sites, specifically Twitter. In order for a tweet to be even be debatable in the

realm of public writing, it must be a completely public posting. Heightened privacy settings can

restrict the size and demographic of the audience, not longer making it truly public. Once a tweet

passes this test, its content is left for scrutiny. Public writing must inspire change or action within

its audience. If I tweet that I¶m currently drinking coffee on my porch, the message does not

have any substance to it. No one is going to be inspired to create social change by my tweet

about a mundane daily activity. Despite the fact that it is written in the public domain, it is not

public writing. Another instance of something falling into the ³grey area´ is advertising.

Four years ago while driving down Interstate 91, I look over at a bright red billboard with

two words on it: ³I pooted.´ The billboard was located in a prominent section of the interstate

and had a potentially unlimited audience. Thus, there was plenty of attention drawn to it and

everyone was potentially included in the statement. Despite those two positive aspects, the

message conveyed virtually nothing to me beyond confusion. No action was sparked nor was

awareness raised. However, after speaking with my younger cousin, I learned that ³I pooted´ is a

line from a Cartoon Network television show, which lead him to show me a portion of an

episode. While the message held no meaning to me due to a lack of prior knowledge, it did in

fact spark action in my cousin (raising my awareness to the show and changing my knowledge

base). This scenario can be switched to literally any advertising campaign. If the billboard were

to say ³Just do it´ and I did not have the prior knowledge that it was the Nike slogan, I would be
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just as confused as in the ³I pooted´ situation. This goes to show that once the basics of attention

and inclusion are satisfied, whether or not something is public writing is determined by what

meaning the audience ascribes to it. As such, I deem advertisement to be public writing,

assuming the audience/receivers of the message take some meaning from it and take action

and/or raise awareness of the campaign.

So in the end, what is public writing? It has become apparent that public writing is

largely subjective to the situation and does not have a singular, all-inclusive definition. However,

I find that the best definition of public writing aligns with the AIDA model. Public writing must

have a potentially unlimited ability to draw in attention, be inclusive of all people and groups,

spark discussion amongst others, and inspire those people to take action to create social change

and raise awareness. The definition of public writing is ever-changing and evolving, but there is

one thing that will not change. No matter what form it takes or how it¶s presented in the future,

there will always be public writing.