title: Every document and picture tells a story: using internal corporate document reviews, semiotics, and content analysis to assess tobacco advertising.
abstract: In this article we present communication theory as a conceptual framework for conducting documents research on tobacco advertising strategies, and we discuss two methods for analysing advertisements: semiotics and content analysis. We provide concrete examples of how we have used tobacco industry documents archives and tobacco advertisement collections iteratively in our research to yield a synergistic analysis of these two complementary data sources. Tobacco promotion researchers should consider adopting these theoretical and methodological approaches.
authors.affiliation: Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, University of California, San Francisco, California 94143-1390, USA.
authors.forename: S J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Anderson
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Dewhirst
authors.forename: P M
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Ling
mesh_terms: D000329:Advertising / Q000379:methods*; D003142:Communication; D004282:Documentation; D006801:Humans; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods; D008037:Linguistics; D012107:Research Design; D012907:Smoking; D019460:Tobacco Industry