Public relations, aspect of communications involving the relations between an entity subject to or seeking public attention and the various publics that are or may be interested in it. The entity seeking attention may be a business corporation, an individual politician, a performer or author, a government or government agency, a charitable organization, a religious body, or almost any other person or organization. The publics may include segments as narrow as female voters of a particular political party who are between 35 and 50 years of age or the shareholders in a particular corporation; or the publics may be as broad as any national population or the world at large. The concerns of public relations operate both ways between the subject entity, which may be thought of as the client, and the publics involved. The important elements of public relations are to acquaint the client with the public conceptions of the client and to affect these perceptions by focusing, curtailing, amplifying, or augmenting information, often through mass media and social media, about the client as it is conveyed to the public.

The empire builders of the 19th century often disdained a curious public and an inquisitive press, but this attitude soon came under fire from muckraking journalists. In 1906 Ivy Lee, a former newspaperman, became publicity adviser to a group of American anthracite coal-mine operators who had aroused the anger of the press by their haughty attitudes toward miners and the press in labour disputes. Lee persuaded the mine owners to abandon their refusal to answer questions, and he shortly sent out an announcement that the operators would supply the press with all possible information. Later that year he was retained by the Pennsylvania Railroad and brought into effect a new practice: giving the press full information about railroad accidents. In this he was forging a major ingredient of what had not yet come to be called public relations (B.).