In this week’s lectorial, we covered institutions and the type of essays we need to produce for our fourth project brief which is convenient considering my group and I are doing our project on institutions.

As summarised by Branston & Stafford (1999) in The Media Student’s Book 2nd Ed, institutions are enduring; regulate and structure activities; are ‘collectivist’; develop working practices; employees and people; associates are expected to share values; and the public is aware of them. Examples of institutions include the ABC, The News, Journalism, Newscorp, Cinema, Broadcast Television, Community Radio and Public Service Broadcasting. These institutions are more than just businesses due to their professionalised values and activities, as well as the relationships they develop with their audiences.

This then led to a discussion on essays, or rather the particular types of essays that we have to produce for our next project, which are an audio essay and a video essay. And pretty much the audio and video essays are different to the usual written essays because they make you rethink what essays are. Research is very important to these kind of essays as you can use other clips and footage from other sources as a form of citation and points to support ideas that you present. It also doesn’t have a particular structure like a written essay would have.