Paper Title
An Analysis of Dissertations on Advertising in Turkey

Abstract
A doctoral dissertation is an academic text that is characterized as the highest title at a university and is derived from the Greek, meaning “Teacher of Philosophy” which makes it possible to take on the title of Doctor. Dissertations have ethical values and are based on academic conventions. Therefore, the dissertation is a text with a high command of the related scientific methods and techniques that are expected to make contributions to the relevant academic literature.The objective of the study was to generate a map as to where, how, when and with the accompaniment of which theoretical and methodological tendencies “advertising” is studied instead of a doctoral thesis under a certain discipline with the help of content analysis. Accordingly, another objective of the study is to make sense of the academic literature based on the dissertations on advertising. Dissertations were accessed via the National Thesis Center database within the scope of the study. The theses at this center are comprised of those that have been recorded in Turkey since 1980. Therefore, doctoral theses completed prior to 1980 were outside the scope of the study. The main page search term used at the National Thesis Center internet website was “advertising” and the fields of search was thesis title, whereas thesis type was selected as “doctorate”. Proficiency in art theses were not included. As a result, a total of 191 dissertations were accessed as of December 31, 2016 for the period between 1981 and 2016. The analysis categories determined were the year in the system, thesis title, university, and language and thesis type. The topic category was not used even though it was present in the system since topics are accessed by making selections from the given fields. The topic category in the study was comprised by way of the abstract and full texts of the theses. Related institute and department categories were determined afterward by clicking on the thesis numbers. The abstracts and full texts of studies with open allowance were examined in order to determine the theoretical and methodological tendencies of the theses. Advertising at the doctorate level in Turkey still stands as a subject that awaits to be further examined via academic contributions rather than contributions from the sector which is expecting to be studied with the accompaniment of different theoretical frameworks and tendencies via multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and trans disciplinary studies.