“Primary stakeholders are those people or groups whose actions can be harmful or beneficial to
an organization” whereas “secondary stakeholders or influencers are those people or groups who
can affect or be affected by the actions of an organization”. (Coombs, 2997, p.25) Furthermore, all
the stakeholders can be divided into three levels of publics; the latent, the aware or the active5
.
According to Tench and Yeomans (2009) the latent publics “do not as yet recognize the issue or
problem they are facing with the organization”, the aware publics “recognize that the issue or
problem exists”, and the active publics “organize to discuss and respond to the issue or problem”