Cybercrime in the News, 2019–2026: Growth, Geography and Tone of Global Coverage of Cybercrime and Online Fraud, and How It Compares with Research and Invention

We measure how cybercrime and online fraud were covered in a global news index from January 2019 to July 2026, using 97,895 de-duplicated cybercrime articles, and set that coverage beside 5,195 research papers (2015–2025) and 47 patent families (2015–2024) on the topic. Six results stand out: Growth. Cybercrime took 3.95 of every 10,000 news articles in 2019 and 8.5 in 2025, a 2.15-fold rise. The share rose in every year. The peak month was December 2024, at 12.14 articles per 10,000. Geography. India holds 47.99% of located cybercrime news, 3.64 times its share of all news. The United States holds 16.5%, only 0.34 times its share. Cambodia (39.95), North Korea (19.54), Myanmar (14.85) and Thailand (6.1) are the most over-represented countries. Within India. Telangana (2.38), Chandigarh (1.86), Haryana (1.8) and Jharkhand (1.56) lead by lift; Jammu and Kashmir (0.27) is lowest. US state tags remain too noisy to rank. Shifting attention. Between 2023 and 2025, cybercrime's share of India's news rose from 19.81 to 33.3 per 10,000, and Pakistan's rose 4.3 times, the largest rise among countries with at least 100 cybercrime articles in 2025. Tone and urgency. 81.4% of cybercrime articles are negative in tone (all news: 33.6%), and 86.2% are rated critical priority (all news: 42.6%). Research and invention. Cybercrime papers grew from 0.36 to 1.46 per 10,000 papers between 2015 and 2025, a 4.06-fold rise in share. Patent titles rarely use the word: only 47 families in ten years.