Speech strategy sequencing in personal ads

Traditional personal advertisements often follow an ‘X seeks Y for Z’ format. The current study analyses the presence of these different components of personal ads (referred to as speech strategies) and their sequencing across four socio-sexual groups (women seeking women, women seeking men, men seeking women and men seeking men) and distinct types of relationships desired (romantic, sexual and other) in two regions, Mexico City and London. Results indicate that the structure of personal ads varied by both factors across regions. Posters who expressed desire for romantic relationships in London diverged less from the traditional format than those who portrayed themselves as seeking sex or other types of relationships. Additionally, socio-sexual groups differed in the type and frequency of several components within their personal ads. The indexicality of the XYZ structure as well as differences in portrayed relationship desired between regions are discussed as factors contributing to regional differences.

The Death and Life of Classified Ads

This chapter traces a media history of craigslist by examining the development of classified and personal ads through the arrival of the digital age. Craigslist has played a key role in the struggle of legacy media like newspapers to stay afloat, disrupting what had previously been an easily overlooked but crucially reliable source of funding. Although it has been compared with a number of things and places over the years—job fair, flea market, local pub—craigslist has always thought of itself as a website for getting classified ads online. The chapter thus defines what classified ads are and why they matter in the context of newspapers, reading publics, and craigslist. Easily overlooked compared with their sexier marketing-ad counterparts, classifieds are actually crucial to the economics of local newspapers, and they also have an important history in allowing regular people to reach a wide audience while retaining their anonymity. Like craigslist, classified ads are simultaneously a tool for local businesses and important links for marginalized communities.

Kinky Access

The Next Generation (TNG) is a nationally recognized group of kinky people who seek to educate and socialize members between the ages of 18-35 into the kink community. This chapter explores information provided by 20 TNG groups on Fetlife.com using thematic analysis. The major emergent themes are education with an emphasis on age, socialization, asking questions, and resources; common rules with an emphasis on personal ads, photography, alcohol, and consent; and the purpose, planning, and etiquette of Munches.

House, Car, or Permanent Residency?

While male migrants are an understudied group, even less attention has been paid to their heterosexual practices. This chapter locates such practices by examining online personal ads posted by higher-wage mainland Chinese migrant men in Singapore. This chapter empirically contributes to migration and masculinity studies by examining the understudied site of online personal ads. Theoretically, this chapter aims to contribute by firstly, extending Aihwa Ong’s (1999) theory of neoliberal flexibility to an analysis of Chinese masculinity. Secondly, even as Chinese migrant men exemplify neoliberal flexibility, the chapter argues that neoliberalism is not the only condition producing flexible masculinity. Rather, Chinese migrant men’s flexible subject-making can be analyzed as ‘variegated’ and simultaneously situated in cultural and social imaginaries.

Emerging Technologies of Love

Chapter Four begins in the heat of the police investigation into Frieda Kliem’s murder, following the police as they pursue Frieda’s killer. It then explores the ways in which the age-old practice of matchmaking was transformed into a fundamentally new technology of love: newspaper personal ads. Examining both the rise and wager of using personal ads to find love and exploring their significance for gay Berliners, this chapter argues that newspaper personal ads’ appeal lay both in their radical attempt to harness the distinct qualities of urban life as a way of making love more attainable and in their very practical rejection of middle-class society’s fascination with fate and fortuity. These advantages notwithstanding, personal ads remained too great of an affront to stability, that prized quality of middle-class life, and, as the chapter concludes, this relegated both ads and, importantly, their users, to the shadows.

Engaging staff in advance care planning during National Healthcare Decisions Week at a major cancer hospital.

19 Background: In a 2014 study of US adults, “lack of awareness” was the most commonly reported reason for not having an advance directive (AD). Medical staff have opportunities to increase AD awareness for patients at key touchpoints in the cancer treatment trajectory. At City of Hope National Medical Center (COH), the Department of Supportive Care Medicine with administrative support and significant institutional collaboration created a patient-and-staff-centric Advance Care Planning program and marketing awareness campaign titled “Plan Today for Tomorrow.” Methods: Efforts were made to increase staff comfortability with and personal completion of ADs. General education was provided through staff in-services, medical grand rounds, and new employee orientation, all with opportunities to complete personal ADs. In addition, education and training were provided to staff at key patient touchpoints, including new patient services and the pre-anesthesia testing clinic. Most recently, during the 2017 National Healthcare Decisions Week, one day was tailored specifically to increasing the number of staff who have completed their own advance directive. A five dollar Starbucks incentive was made available for non-physician staff who completed their own AD. Free notary services and AD support were made available at multiple locations on the main COH campus and satellites clinics. Results: On the day dedicated to staff outreach and completion of personal ADs during the COH 2017 National Healthcare Decisions week, 109 staff members completed their own AD. Staff participants reported increased comfort with the AD conversation, relief of personal burden by completing AD, increased understanding of the document and the importance of completion, and a sense of “practicing what they preach” to patients. Conclusions: Targeted efforts to engage staff in advance care planning can be successful. Nominal incentives may be helpful to attract staff to explore advance care planning personally. Further work is needed to embed advance care planning and advance directive completion in the culture of healthcare institutions.

What is Love?

After the middle of the nineteenth century, city clerks, social reformers, and journalists began to reflect about the effects of Berlin’s dynamic transformation. This chapter focuses on an influential strand of this literature in which authors claimed that the spread of new activities, such as visits to dance halls or seeking marriage through personal ads, resulted in the decline of people’s “feeling of morality” (sittliches Gefühl). The chapter demonstrates that it was important for contemporary authors to draw on the concept of feeling rather than other concepts of morality, as this enabled them to respond to the rising authority of the natural sciences. Since a number of observers described a feeling of morality as an important element that tied Berliners together as a community, its loss raised concern about the effects of urban change on the bodies and minds of the city’s inhabitants.