Public Relations Case Study: Australia's Online Romance Scams Analysis

This case study examines the public relations challenges presented by online dating and romance scams in Australia. It highlights the application of the two-way asymmetric model, where scammers exploit individuals seeking companionship to extort money. The assignment references data from Scamwatch, revealing significant financial losses. It explores the measures taken by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), including educational campaigns and collaborations with banks and social media platforms to prevent future scams. The case study emphasizes the importance of victims speaking out and the need for legal consequences for offenders. Ultimately, the analysis demonstrates how public relations strategies can be used to address and mitigate the impact of these scams, offering insights into the effectiveness of various preventative measures and the importance of public awareness.

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Public Relations
Advanced Public Relations Theories
Case Study: Australia Online Dating and Romance Scams

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• Apparently, public relation can be defined as the process of managing
information between two parties for example from an individual to the public or
from a certain organization to the public (Seitel, 2017).
• Public relations theories are of importance to public relation officers since they
help understand them how public relations work.
• James Grunig who has practised public relations for four years came up four
models that have helped practitioners to understand better about public
relations. These models includes Public Information model, two way Asymmetric
Model, two way symmetric model and press Agentry model (Birkland, 2015).
• In this presentation we are going to have a case study whereby the two way
asymmetric model is depicted.

• In our case study, we are going to look at a case study whereby many
Australians lost millions of shillings to scammers.
• According to Scamwatch data, 1.8 million dollars was lost to dating and
romance scams.
• This amount is believed to be much higher as put by Delia Rickard who is the
deputy chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
• In these dating and romance scams, offenders took advantage of the public
loneliness as a result of lacking a partner so as to extort money from them .
(Whitty, 2018).
• Ms Rickard said these scams were cruel since an individual may lose over one
million dollars, mortgage their homes thus becoming emotionally devastated.

• In the year 2016, there were more than four thousand cases that
were submitted to Scamwatch concerning dating and romance scams.
• ACCC do not have enough resources to police such kind of huge
numbers but they have developed a way of having educational
campaigns in order to warn the public.
• The commission also employed a way of advising victims, banks and
various social media platforms to put the right measures in place and
prevent future scams.

• The measures put in place by Australian Competition and Consumer
Commission of going public was of great help since it helped victims know
that they were being conned their money.
• This is evident because one man had shared his conversion with a certain
woman.
• He had met with the woman on one of the common Australian dating
website and after the woman had requested for money from the man for
several days, the man was ready to send the woman some money but the
bank officials alerted him that he was being swindled.
• This shows that the measures put by ACC had some positive effect on
eradicating the menace.

• According to my own perspective, I would advise people who have
been of victim of these scammers not to fear and open up about the
issue. (Theaker, 2017).
• This is because those people who still believe it’s a wonderful
relationship will come to realise that it’s just a scam thus saving them
their money.
• Culprits caught swindling money from the publics should be
apprehended and sued for cyber-crime offences.

• In conclusion, we can see that the two way asymmetrical model can
be explained in our case example.
• It is two way in which one individual persuades the other in order to
come to a transaction. Here the scammers are abusing the use of
social media to cone innocent people.

Bibliography
• Seitel, F. P. (2017). Practice of Public Relations. Pearson Education.
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• Birkland, T. A. (2015). An introduction to the policy process: Theories, concepts,
and models of public policy making. Routledge.
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• Theaker, A. (2017). What is public relations?. In The Public Relations Strategic
Toolkit (pp. 17-27). Routledge.
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• Whitty, M. T. (2018). Do you love me? Psychological characteristics of romance
scam victims. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 21(2), 105-109.