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Data from The GDELT Project · Reviewed and interpreted by RSRC

Media coverage research

Romance scams in the news

Explore how romance scams are reported, what harms and responses appear in the coverage, and how a story develops over time.

Each record represents a web page found through GDELT, such as online news coverage, commentary or a blog post. We review its saved title and description, then add themes and context. These are not recordings or full copies of the source pages. What counts as a media record?

Explore the coverageHow this research works

Explore story groups and reported follow-ups to see related coverage and timelines.

These are counts of coverage, not counts of scams. Several articles may describe the same event. A source may report an allegation, repeat another story, or discuss an event from an earlier year.

Reviewed media coverage, 2025–2026 · Method RSRC-QCA-2026-10-08.2 · Codebook 1.1.0

Download public media metadata (JSON Lines) for research without opening every page. The file contains included source titles, URLs, categories and observation dates. These dates are not publication or event dates; detailed coding and qualifications remain on individual records. Publisher bodies are not included.

Observation period: 1 Jan 2025–4 Oct 2026. These dates describe the collected windows; missing files are listed in the methods.

12,949Included media URLsRelevant in the available evidence
24Themes assessedA theme may appear in many records

Explore a theme

Included URLs mentioning each theme. Themes overlap; warnings and reported experiences remain distinct in the records.

Financial and property harm 5,536Technical facilitation 3,614Help, reporting and prevention 3,310Investigation and operational response 2,251Investment pretext 2,227Justice proceedings and outcomes 1,182Organization and division of labor 1,024Protection or recovery of assets 607

Where would you like to start?

Open a record’s connected reporting to examine repeated wording or later developments. Use these leads to build research questions; they do not establish how common a harm is among all victims.

Build a chart

Choose a theme, language, country or search phrase. Plot the matching coverage over time, then open the records behind each month.

Open chart builder

Browse by observation month

A URL is counted once in each month when it was observed. The same URL can appear in several months, so these figures should not be added together.

All included sources contribute to these totals. First and last months may be partial; check the observation period and file availability before comparing them.

Distinct included URLs observed in each month
Observed monthAll included URLs
Jan 2025591
Feb 20251,629
Mar 2025561
Apr 2025390
May 2025398
Jun 2025209
Jul 2025522
Aug 2025447
Sep 2025613
Oct 2025483
Nov 2025392
Dec 2025333
Jan 2026530
Feb 20261,106
Mar 2026360
Apr 2026491
May 2026785
Jun 2026842
Jul 20261,143
Aug 2026640
Sep 2026638
Oct 202630

Recently observed coverage

Ordered by when GDELT observed the record, not when the reported event happened.

Need help with a suspected scam? Find support and reporting resources. For research syntheses, visit Research Insights.