Public Advocacy and Civic Engagement in Communication

Public advocacy is people getting involved in their community, local government and more, and calling for change with issues they believe exist. Civic engagement is the act of getting involved in the community and actively trying to make a change where they believe there is a problem. It is the process of taking public advocacy one step further. They are both closely related and are both important. They are also both closely related to communication.

It is a rhetorical situation. The problem that inspires people to publicly advocate or get involved in their community is the exigence. The public advocators need to speak to other people who do not yet believe in their cause and inform them about the issue and then convince them that the problem is urgent and needs more help. For people who want to get others involved and actively trying to make a change, the goals of their speech need to be to inform and convince but also to motivate. They need to establish a strong pathos, and emotionally connect with their audience. In both cases, they need to understand who their audience is. If the audience is already aware of the issue they will be speaking about, they need to take more time convincing them to possibly change their views or if they already believe in it, convince them to continue supporting the cause. They also need to be aware of their constraints, maybe their audience has limited information about the topic or they are very stubborn in their beliefs to disagree. Speaking out to the rest of the community is the main way to get others involved in the community whether it be advocating the issues with the local government or actually acting to make a change.