The following study, prepared under the auspices of the IEER ad-hoc business climate research project, proposes to answer the question of how economic processes can affect the appearance of this topic in the mass media. In our research, we examined whether the 2008-09 economic crisis changed the way in which Hungarian journalists used terms, employed new terms in the daily press, or went through a learning process which revealed a more informed and attentive form of journalism regarding economic processes and their relationships.

The results show that the economic crisis changed the vocabulary in use by Hungarian online media: during the crisis and the years since, economic subjects received more attention than before 2008. Terms related to economic policy, corporate topics, and the financial crisis increased significantly, while in the case of the foreign trade word group, this change was negative. Along these lines, it can be said that the economic crisis represented a real break point regarding the occurrence of economic issues in the media.