Faculty Profile for Dr. Kristen Sussman

Biography Section

Biography and Education

Kristen L. Sussman (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) is an advertising scholar and computational social scientist with advanced knowledge of social media and online advertising. Dr. Sussman leverages her expertise in native and third-party social media platforms to connect, monitor, and assess consumer behavior. Recently, that curiosity has led her to examine AI's impact and implications through AI-mediated communication.

Teaching Interests

Dr. Sussman's teaching interests are in advertising strategy, new media, media technology, engagement, data science, marketing analytics, and computational methods.

Dr. Sussman's prior teaching experience includes academic lecturing appointments at The University of Texas at Austin and St. Edward's Bill Munday School of Business. She's also supported corporate communications teams, leading the design and implementation of curriculum in social business for enterprise tech (i.e., adoption, measurement, and community management) and continuing education in online advertising.

Research Interests

Her research focuses on the impact of online communications and, more recently, artificial intelligence (AI). Dr. Sussman aims to uncover important relationships between advancements in generative AI technology and media effects, consumer behavior, and social network engagement.

Using a combination of language analysis and behavioral trace data, Dr. Sussman applies social science methods in the domain of computational advertising to investigate message processing and explore the effects of different social and psychological framing techniques. Her expertise has contributed to research on discrete emotion and media use, advertising effectiveness, technology adoption, health communication, and science communication.

In 2023, Dr. Sussman joined as Co-PI on a City of Austin grant where she is contributing her expertise to test the role of AI in advertising and provide support for the co-design of the research with a focus given to the creation, execution, and reporting of research findings using behavioral and trace data collected through social media.

Sussman has been published in the Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, International Journal of Advertising, Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing, and Journal of Marketing Development and Competitiveness. She regularly presents her work at academic conferences and is a member of the American Academy of Advertising (AAA) and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC).