Family and Interpersonal Communication Resilience Model in Facing Love Scam Manipulation: A Qualitative Study in a Low Income Urban Settlement in Medan City

High social media use combined with limited digital literacy is associated with heightened vulnerability among residents of low-income urban settlements in Medan City to romance or love scams. This study aims to develop a model of family and interpersonal communication resilience that explains how families detect, respond to, and support recovery from the emotional manipulation involved in love scams. Using a qualitative approach with a phenomenological orientation, in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with purposively selected informants, comprising love scam victims, parents or family caregivers, and community or religious leader(s) who supported affected families, in a densely populated, low-income settlement area in Medan City. Data were analyzed using the interactive analysis model of Miles, Huberman and Saldana, combined with a phenomenological reading aimed at uncovering the subjective meaning of informants' experiences. Findings show that emotional manipulation in love scams tends to unfold through five recurring, non-linear stages initiating contact, intensifying attention, cultivating emotional dependency, isolating communication, and exploitation. In response, family communication resilience emerged through seven interrelated practices, synthesized into the LINDUNG Model, an acronym for Lacak (Trace), Inisiasi (Initiate), Normalisasi (Normalize), Deteksi (Detect), Upaya Pemutusan (Severing Efforts), Navigasi (Navigate), and Gotong Royong (Mutual Cooperation). The model conceptualizes resilience not as an individual capacity of the victim alone, but as a collective communication process involving the victim, the family, and the surrounding social environment. As an exploratory, context-bound qualitative study, the proposed model requires further validation, for example through member checking or expert review, before broader application