Institution

School is a major institution, as is the home, they both contain a whole set of rules and codes which 'constrain and control' our lives. In Media Studies, we are most concerned with the institutions responsible for producing media texts.
The institutions concerned with media are usually big companies that would own lots of other smaller companies, which are usually used to influence their ideas and rules into the other companies. The institutions are very big and have global patterns of ownership.
This biggest example of a media institution is The Disney Corporation, owning many companies such as Walt Disney Motion Pictures, Walt Disney Records, Walt Disney Studios, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, Walt Disney Pictures, Disney Consumer Products, Disney Store, Disney cruise lines. They also own a variation of television channels, including their own entire branch such as the Disney Channel, ABC, ESPN, The Discovery Channel, The History Channel and even 25% of GMTV.
Many people do not know that Disney own so much, one of the reasons why Disney does not make it so obvious that they own all of these because people might start to dislike Disney because they control a lot of the media, but by owning many of the companies as an institution it can be biased. Disney is expected to promote family values and they make all of their companies do this, even if the viewers or customers are not aware of this.