There is a difference between making information public and publicizing it. “Public” implies democracy, freedom, participation, and inclusion, while “publicity” suggests openness, visibility, attention, status, and spectacle. Information that is public can, in theory, be accessed by virtually anyone, but in practice will probably only be seen by a few. In contrast, information that is publicized is strategically made visible to a greater audience through three dimensions: the effort it takes to find information, the ease of locating that information, and the interest in that information. For instance, imagine that the records of an acrimonious celebrity divorce are made public. To read them, one must drive to a California courthouse, find the court records department, request them from an archivist, and wait for the records to be found. The requestor may be able, at best, to make a photocopy to take home. These steps are significant barriers to obtaining the information, and so place it in a state of what law scholars call “practical obscurity.” But once a tabloid reporter goes through this process, scans the documents, puts them on the tabloid website, and adds an enormous headline, the records are publicized, or “hyper-disseminated.” Publicizing information is thus an effort to make it more interesting (by placing it on a tabloid site with a large headline), easier to find (through Google or other indexes), and easier to obtain (once it is online).

Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, loc. 605