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As of March 2005, roughly a dozen books and over 220 papers were published utilising analyses of tobacco industry documents, 1 reflecting that this research approach has rapidly become of great consequence since 1995, when tobacco documents research was first publicly in print. 2- 6 Nevertheless, there have been recent appeals for greater clarity and rigour in the conduct and reporting of documents research methods, 7, 8, 9, 10 including Carter's call for synthesis (rather than simple description) in documents research. Researchers have also urged for increased efforts to triangulate data found in industry documents with other sources to evaluate the veracity of statements, or to evaluate the results of internal industry activity, such as whether industry plans were carried out. 7, 9 A parallel source of data about the tobacco industry that has developed alongside tobacco industry documents archives is collections of tobacco advertising. In an effort to respond to these calls, we detail methods for analysing advertising archives and documents databases synergistically.
This article is meant to serve several purposes. First, we discuss a theoretical framework from the discipline of communications that may be useful in guiding documents research on tobacco promotion strategies. Second, we argue that it can be illuminating for tobacco control researchers to analyse advertisements formally as a complement to their review of industry documents (rather than using advertisements as mere illustrations), in which we encourage attempts to integrate research approaches that are commonly used for each separate component of the communication process. Semiotics and content analysis are introduced as two approaches for studying advertisements. Semiotics, also sometimes called semiology, is defined as the science or theory of signs. 11, 12 Content analysis, meanwhile, is defined as "a systematic technique for analyzing message content and message handling-it is a tool for observing and analyzing the overt communication behavior of selected communicators". 13 Both approaches are well established research methods that emerged from disciplines that are not necessarily familiar to those in public health. Third, we describe methods for analysing tobacco industry documents and advertising collections in an iterative fashion, wherein analysis of one data source assists in conducting and refining analysis of the other, yielding a synergistic analysis of two complementary data sources.
Many influential studies of tobacco marketing and...