Zheng joins SoCJ, Alda Center team
Xia Zheng, a mass communication scholar and educator, will join the School of Communication and Journalism and Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science as a message-design lecturer.
In the role, Zheng will teach in the SoCJ’s mass communication undergraduate program and continue his research about the effects of media and media use.
“We are delighted to welcome Xia to the SoCJ,” said Laura Lindenfeld, dean of the SoCJ and executive director of the Alda Center. “Across the School and Center, we seek to use communication and communication education to help create a fairer, more just, more rational world. Xia’s research about how we consume, understand and respond to media messages plays an important role in that mission, and his experience adds breadth and depth to our faculty and expands opportunities for our students.”
Zheng has published papers about how media use influences individual behavior and health outcomes, including e-cigarette use habits and Covid-19 vaccination. He has also studied how advertising affects gender identity. His work has been published in a variety of peer-reviewed publications, including Health Communication, The Social Science Journal, Politics and the Life Sciences and Frontiers in Psychology.
A former journalist, Zheng has taught undergraduate courses in media and behavior, advertising, strategic communication, television production and design and communication theory.
He will join Stony Brook this summer upon completion of his doctoral program in mass communication at Indiana University-Bloomington.