MEST1: Institutions

One of the problems with the institutions question on the MEST1 paper is that often it is not about media institutions per se. Rather it is about what the institutions involved in the production and distribution of media texts are saying about themselves in or with the very texts you are being asked to comment on.

One way to think about this is to ask 'what is it that the institutions involved in the production and distribution of this text in this media (on this platform) saying about themselves with this very text'? 


Another way would be to think about this in terms how the text works as an advert for the media institutions that produced and distributed it? 


 What claims does the text make in terms of the brand of the institutions involved, what claims does it make about the values the institution purports to have as part of its marketing strategy. 


In terms of media theory consider the ways in which: 

1. the Institution encodes a message about itself in the text, 
2. the extent to which the message of the medium (McLuhan - The Medium is the Message) is about the institution,
3. what is the text's discourse of representation about the institutions that produced and distributed it?

It might be worth considering the Institutional issues question as trying to uncover what rhetorics the Institution is mobilising within, through and by the text. If a product in an advert lays claim to green, ecological, credentials then so to does the institution that produced &/or distributed they text. Read this and think about the use of 'fun' that Cadburys & Fallon were engaged in and what they were saying about themselves with & in these texts.