Personals/Personal Ads

Personals are advertisements placed by individuals in print or online media to signal their availability and desire to meet with others for romantic encounters or relationships. Historically, their growth has paralleled that of the print media. For example, in the Northwest United States in the 1800s, advertisements in newspapers were common for mail-order brides. In eighteenth-century Britain, personal ads were a feature of matrimonial columns in national newspapers. Their popularity really mushroomed in the second half of the twentieth century in Western societies. Studies have looked at their usage in print form in North and South America, eastern and western Europe, and in Australia and New Zealand. However, since the mid-1990s, online personals have overtaken their printed forerunners as a global facility for engineering social ...