A comparative study on image-text relations in big pharma's codes of ethics

The study of image-text interconnections offers an interdisciplinary approach to understand and contextualize visuals. The present research explores image-text relations in codes of ethics (CoEs), which are corporate documents issued by corporations. Drawing from a generalized system of image-text relations (Martinec & Salway 2005), quantitative and qualitative analyses are conducted to illustrate the type of image-text relation implemented in CoEs by companies operating in the global pharmaceutical sector, the so-called Big Pharma industry. Findings suggest that visual type does not necessarily determine a fixed pattern of image-text relations in CoEs. While pictures, drawings and tables display a clear, recurring trend, graphics do not.