Further classifications are made on the basis to which people are actively seeking or passively encountering ("stumbling into") information about the problem.
Level of involvement is a measure of how personally and emotionally relevant a problem can be for an individual (Grunig & Hunt, 1984).
Dervin (1989) stated that messages will be attended to only if the benefits or dangers associated with them have “taken on some kind of personal reality or usefulness for the individual” (p. 68).
In general, persons with high involvement analyze issues more often, prefer messages that contain more and better arguments (Heath, Liao, & Douglas, 1995; Petty & Cacioppo, 1981, 1986), and attain greater knowledge levels (Chaffee & Roser, 1986; Engelberg, Flora, & Nass, 1995).
The situational theory of publics originated in James E. Grunig's journalism monograph titled “The Role of Information in Economic Decision Making” in 1966.
In his doctoral dissertation on the economic decision making processes of large landowners in Colombia, Grunig developed the second variable of the theory, constraint recognition.
Since that time the theory has been used widely in academic studies and to some extent in professional practice and research.
It has been extended to explain why people join activist groups; internal and external dimensions have been identified for problem recognition, level of involvement, and constraint recognition; and research has been conducted to determine whether information campaigns (which generally are passively processed) can create publics.