1. Student no: s13161812 Reflective Response to Reading – Week 4 MED4105
1 | P a g e
Gemma Harris
The author in week four’s reading focuses on how promotional activity dominates political
communicationshaping the public’s perception. An important concept is power as certain political
campaigns can become more powerful in society frompromotional activity.It relates to this week’s
lecture asthe development of technology has caused an increase on the use of promotional activity.
Social media provides more promotional material and increases public involvement with political
campaigns. This week’s reading was more difficult to understand because there were so many
concepts involved.
A promotional resource used for the presentation of groupsdiscusses the dependence and power of
media organisations and the PR involvement when obtaining political information. This is cultural
promotion; the reading states we can “identify some groups as ‘resource-poor’ or ‘resource-rich’”
(Albertazzi and Cobley, 2010, p. 125).This could be due to the group’s social class and presentation
within society. Class, social difference and class as a political category are important within the
media.
In this sense, class is…. a powerfully normative concept that allows an analyst not just to
explain social structural inequalities, but to explain how such systematic features can be
challenged, overcome and transformed. In doing so, this tradition of the use of the class idea
is firmly Marxist in orientation…
Back and Bennett et al., 2012, p. 49
This impliesclass is about power of political groups in society; it relates to Marx’s theory of class.It
links to promotional culture by groups presenting themselves in a certain way influencing their place
in society depending on if they are resource-rich or resource-poor.
Apolitical group is the Canadian adbusters; they are a pressure group consisting of various cultures.
They want to “forge a major shift in the way we will live in the 21st
century” (Adbusters.org, 2014).
They link to this concept of class in a political category using cultural promotion as they are a

2. Student no: s13161812 Reflective Response to Reading – Week 4 MED4105
2 | P a g e
Gemma Harris
political pressure group, who have incorporated developing technology, to self-promote and to
shape the public’s perception of them to be a superior group in society.
A new investigation could be “How does class and status as a political category, within the
relationship between PR and Journalism, impact the developing technologies use of promotional
culture?” A suitable methodology would be semiotics as the promotion used could be studied to
symbolise the group’s status.
In conclusion, the knowledge I gained is that political groups and media organisations can present
themselves to the public in a certain way through promotional resources, gaining power, which in
fact may not be credible.

3. Student no: s13161812 Reflective Response to Reading – Week 4 MED4105
3 | P a g e
Gemma Harris
Bibliography:
Adbusters.org. 2014. About | AdbustersCulturejammer Headquarters. [online] Available at:
https://www.adbusters.org/about/adbusters [Accessed: 22 Feb 2014].
Albertazzi, D. and Cobley, P. 2010. The media. 3rd ed. New York: Pearson Education.
Back, L., Bennett, A., Edles, L. D., Gibson, M., Inglis, D., Jacobs, R. and Woodward, I. 2012.
Cultural Sociology: an introduction. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell.