Companionship in the Classifieds: The Adoption of Personal Advertisements by Daily Newspapers

This study investigates advertising for romantic partners in the daily newspaper. A telephone survey of U.S. daily newspapers shows that mate finding is becoming a matter of mediated information, suggesting a new function for the media. Media dependency theory predicts that individuals will tend to turn to the mass media for this information. The adoption of innovation model explains the process needed to do so.