Despite partial legislative improvements such as the enactment and amendment of the Anti-Stalking Act, intimate partner violence in dating relationships (hereafter “dating violence”) still tends to be handled as a subcategory of domestic violence or general violent crime, making it difficult to incorporate its relational particularities into the legal framework and to enable early intervention and prevention. This study conducted a weak signal analysis using news data-based text mining to detect early signs of future risks in the social discourse surrounding dating violence. The dataset consisted of domestic news articles containing the keywords “intimate partner violence” or “dating violence” published between June 2024 and May 2025. The analysis identified keywords with low frequency but a notable recent upward trend as weak signals, which were classified into four thematic categories: victim experience (“suffering,” “recovery”), offender behavior and motives (“spouse,” “retaliation,” “impulsive,” “love,” “sex crime,” “filming”), institutional response (“order,” “sentencing”), and gender perception (“discrimination”). Victim experience highlighted the persistence of suffering and challenges of recovery; offender behavior and motives emphasized the specificity of violence in intimate relationships and the need for criminalization; institutional response underscored the importance of a prevention-oriented legal framework and enforcement capacity; and gender perception pointed to the necessity of reflecting structural contexts and improving cultural attitudes. By framing dating violence as a complex crime shaped by social structures, institutions, and cultural dynamics, this study offers foundational insights for policy design aimed at early intervention and proactive response.
Lee et al. (Tue,) studied this question.