Project summary

Digital identity and trust issue

Online fraud is rising rapidly, with a combined £1.3 billion loss reported across Australia and the UK last year. Among those who are most affected are socially excluded and marginalised populations, including the older adults, migrants, people suffering mental health issues, and those facing financial hardships. These individuals are often targeted due to limited networks and reduced ability to verify information. Fraudsters exploit these vulnerabilities by posing persuasive digital personas, mimicking trusted figures to deceive. Hence, the line between authentic and deceptive actors is blurred, undermining users’ ability assess their trustworthiness.

Despite this growing threat, research tends to focus on individual traits, rather than the relational structures that shape online vulnerability and exposure to manipulative. Few studies examine the networked nature of online fraud. Without understanding how relational and communicative vulnerabilities intersect, fraud prevention strategies risk overlooking those most at risk.

This project addresses this gap by investigating how social exclusion and deceptive content interact to increase fraud exposure – an underexplored intersection that helps explain systemic vulnerability. It offers new insights into the structural production of digital inequality and identifies points of intervention to enhance trust and mitigate harm online.

Proposed Approach

This project investigates how social exclusion and manipulative digital content shape fraud victimisation. Drawing on theories of routine activity, social capital, persuasion, identity management, it combines survey data analysis, social network analysis, and natural language process (NLP) techniques to examine both relational vulnerabilities and the linguistic features used by offenders in shaping online fraud.