The lecture last week consisted of two topics:

• Media institutions
• Video essays

The word ‘institution’, is another term for ‘sociology’. I kind of struggled with understanding this topic, as all the definitions everywhere either described different elements of institutions, or provided examples, rather than explaining exactly what one is. But with the help of other people’s blog posts, I was finally able to slightly understand even just a fraction of this topic (but I still don’t even know if I’m correct). From what I understand, ‘media institutions’ are like a social structure for different organizations or partnerships to follow. We looked at the example of marriage in the lecture. We were shown that elements such as social, political, cultural, economic, symbolic, and legal are what pretty much make up a marriage. These elements also apply to organizations such as Facebook, HBO, ABC, journalism, and community media.

In regards to the discussion on video essays, I perfectly understood this area so much more. There was one thing that stood out to me, which is what made it all click in my mind:

“The other big difference between a real essay and the things they make you write in school is that a real essay doesn’t take a position and then defend it”