A media institution is an organization or company responsible for producing media texts or media products. The primary aim of these institutions is to create a highly profitable media product such as the film Inception. Inception is a 2010 feature film produced by Legendary Pictures, which is a division of Legendary Entertainment, the subsidiary of the conglomerate Wanda Group. Within the making of Inception, these two institutions control and produce the representation of the media product, Inception. A budget is given, in this case for $160 million in order to create a product to be sold to a specific mainstream target audience and demographic, which has been meticulously researched in the planning stage. As a result of the in depth planning from the pre-production staff and the specialist within the production company, for example the Director Christopher Nolan, the film grossed $825.4 million at the box office. This created a profit of $665.5 million for the conglomerate, Wanda group, as they receive the largest percentage of the profit. To summarize; the producers (institution) make a representation of a cinematic ‘world’ of Inception, in which the target audience uses their disposable income to pay for the gratification of diversion into this ‘world’ (Blumler and Katz 1974, Uses and Gratification theory), thus the profit of this then gets taken by the conglomerate. Yet, some of this profit may be used again to produce potential films with the aim to make more money. This process is not limited to the film industry as it takes place within the music industry with media products being the music artists and the computer games industry with the media products being the video game.The way that these institutions can garner the greatest profit is through ‘illusion of choice’.

The illusion of choice is the barrier between the conglomerate and the audience, where the disposable income of the audiences may be intended for the crew and cast, however the overall profit is mostly shared from the conglomerate to the subsidiary and then division, where the percentage of profit decreases as it shares downwards. As long as the illusion of choice remains in the eye’s of the audiences, the conglomerates will always have more than the other levels, keeping them satisfied and the authority of using the profit to create more media products to distribute for more profit. Yet if the film (for instance Titanic) does flop, the institutions above Paramount Pictures (a division) have nothing to worry about, such as Viacom - the conglomerate - as they would have other various media products (film, cartoon, series, TV shows) already are preparing to be distributed through many other media platforms to collect profit from target audiences by the illusion of choice of the most popular media text they own.

Speaking of authority, the Institutions’ role in producing film is always in their control for pre and post production, with NBCUniversal and Comcast as conglomerates having the authority and power to hire or fire any crew within the subsidiary and division group that were in the process of making Jurassic Park (1993). The conglomerates could also make changes that would’ve made it in the final version of the film, such as a desired representation of something or a stereotype of a group of people they think are needed in the film to please/appeal to the target audience. For example, the portrayal of the antagonist character: Dennis Nedry, who is represented by Wayne Knight, fulfills the stereotypical fat, rude and extremely intelligent computer nerd to hack the whole security system of an island. This decision can be made by the conglomerate if the casting of Dennis Nedry did not seem to match their representation of the "computer nerd", which will significantly impact on how the film turns out to be through the actors who are hired to represent and instill the character in the audience's minds. Conglomerates and subsidiary institutions also have control over planning and storyline stages, the screenplay and script between the characters, and how the - now contemporarily famous park - in Jurassic Park looked in their vision.