Prof. Zhu Interviewed by PNAS on Public Agenda-Setting for Climate Change and COVID-19

07 Mar 2022 (Mon)

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), which is the official journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), published a news story on March 4, 2022 to report a recent study by a group of scientists from the U. S., the Netherland, and New Zealand on the competition of public attention between climate change and COVID-19. In preparing the news, PNAS interviewed Dr. Winson Peng of Michigan State University (MSU) and Prof. Jonathan Zhu of Department of Media and Communication at City University for comments because the original study cited Prof. Zhu’s (1992) zero-sum theory of agenda-setting as a guiding framework.

Dr. Peng obtained his PhD from CityU under Prof. Zhu’s supervision in 2008 and is currently a tenured Associate Professor of Communication at MSU. In the published interview, Dr. Peng and Prof. Zhu introduced several studies of theirs on the competitive-cooperative dynamics of public attention to social issues, including one study on the 2012 U. S. Presidential Election and another ongoing study on public issue ecology. 

In the eve of the 30th anniversary of his zero-sum study, Prof. Zhu reflected on the continuous advances of the theory by scholars across disciplines that “this is indeed a little theory that can go a long way”.