Portrayal of New Psychoactive Substances in the Hungarian Online Media Gergely Pelbát 1,4 & V. Anna Gyarmathy 2,3 & Ágnes Bacsó 3 & Edit Bartos 3 & Andrea Bihari 3 & József Rácz 1,3,4 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016 Abstract We assessed the portrayal of new psychoactive substances (NPS) in online Hungarian printed media between January 1, 2014 and December 31, 2014 using content analysis. Altogether five topics were identified: 1: effects/side effects from the point of view of an outsider; 2: motivation of drug use; 3: type of NPS mentioned; 4: location of consumption or seizures; 5: tone of the article. The results suggest that much of the Hungarian online printed media is written in a sensation seeking way and mainly focuses on police seizures and on the physical (especially on the deviant and aggressive behavioral) effects of NPS usage. Articles mainly associate NPS with events among the marginalized population of the 8 th district in Budapest (a low socioeconomic and drug infested area with a high population proportion of marginalized Roma minorities), or law-enforcement activities outside of Budapest. The mon- itoring of written online media may inform public health professionals and policy makers about emerging problems related to NPS, while such professionals may inform journalists to counterbalance the sensationalist tone of news pieces about NPS. Keywords Media analysis . Online journals . New psychoactive substances . Public health professionals . Journalists The number of known new psychoactive substances (NPS) has grown almost exponentially and the number of NPS seizures increased almost 10-fold in Europe during the past decade (EMCDDA 2015). Alone in 2014, 101 NPS were reported to the EU Early warning system: Int J Ment Health Addiction DOI 10.1007/s11469-015-9629-z * V. Anna Gyarmathy vgyarmat@jhsph.edu 1 Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 2 Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA 3 Faculty of Health Sciences, Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary 4 Blue Point Drug Counselling and Outpatient Centre, Budapest, Hungary