Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2025 May 7;25(1):215.
doi: 10.1186/s12905-025-03751-x.

The impact of objective/sensationalist media on young women's concern and misconceptions about breast cancer: an experimental study

Aldo Aguirre-Camacho  1 , Amalie Akerø Hylland  1 , Valeria Moriconi  1 , Alberto Bellido-Esteban  1 , Judit Tirado-Muñoz  2   3
Affiliations

The impact of objective/sensationalist media on young women's concern and misconceptions about breast cancer: an experimental study

Aldo Aguirre-Camacho et al. BMC Womens Health. .

Abstract

Background: Young women are overrepresented in sensationalist media stories about breast cancer, which has been associated with heightened breast cancer concern within this population. Recent research has also revealed that young women show significant misconceptions about breast cancer, and that these seem to have been increasing over the last two decades. Accordingly, the present study sought to gather experimental evidence on the impact of media messages on negative affect, fear of breast cancer, fatalism, and misconceptions about breast cancer among young women.

Methods: 186 females aged 18 to 40 were randomly allocated into one of three experimental conditions, designed to recreate the nature of breast cancer information typically presented in government health websites (i.e. objective information, condition 1) and women's magazines (i.e. sensationalist information); as part of the sensationalist information, participants were either exposed to a photograph of a young woman (i.e. condition 2) or a middle-aged woman (i.e. condition 3) featured as a cancer patient.

Results: Participants exposed to sensationalist information (i.e. conditions 2 and 3) reported significantly higher levels of negative affect, fear of breast cancer, and fatalism than participants exposed to objective information, after statistically adjusting for relevant covariates. No statistically significant differences were observed between participants exposed to sensationalist information featuring women of different ages. Overall, participants held important misconceptions about breast cancer. First, they greatly overestimated the risk of receiving a breast cancer diagnosis, especially participants exposed to sensationalist information featuring a young woman. Second, they also believed that breast cancer was most often diagnosed among women just under 50 years of age; participants exposed to sensationalist information (i.e. conditions 2 and 3) estimated the age at diagnosis as significantly lower than those exposed to objective information.

Conclusions: This study provides experimental evidence that sensationalist media increases concern and contributes to misconceptions about breast cancer. Concern and misconceptions may by further exacerbated when sensationalist messages feature a young woman as a cancer patient, thus offering a distorted view of the women typically diagnosed with breast cancer. Overall, participants revealed important misconceptions about breast cancer, which has significant implications for preventive behaviors and health communication.

Keywords: Breast cancer; Fatalism; Health competence; Media exposure; Misconceptions; Young women.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Ethics approval and consent to participate: This study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Ethics approval was obtained from the Ethics Committee of Universidad Europea de Madrid. All participants signed written informed consent. Consent for publication: Written informed consent for publication was obtained from the person whose photograph was used as part of the information shown to participants. Consent for publication was not required from participants because full anonymity was ensured; no images or any other type of identifying personal details are being published within this study, nor were gathered as part of data collection. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

References

    1. Carioli G, Malvezzi M, Rodriguez T, Bertuccio P, Negri E, La Vecchia C. Trends and predictions to 2020 in breast cancer mortality in Europe. Breast. 2017;36:89–95. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Malvezzi M, Carioli G, Bertuccio P, Boffetta P, Levi F, La Vecchia C, et al. European cancer mortality predictions for the year 2019 with focus on breast cancer. Ann Oncol. 2019;30(5):781–7. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Engholm G, Ferlay J, Christensen N, Bray F, Gjerstorff ML, Klint A, et al. NORDCAN–a nordic tool for cancer information, planning, quality control and research. Acta Oncol. 2010;49(5):725–36. - DOI - PubMed
    1. NORDCAN. Fact sheets. Available at: https://nordcan.iarc.fr/en/factsheets. Accessed Feb 6, 2025.
    1. Özkan İ, Taylan S. Barriers to women’s breast cancer screening behaviors in several countries: A meta-synthesis study. Health Care Women Int. 2021;42(7–9):1013–43. - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources