Faculty Profiles

Kristen L. Sussman, Ph.D. (University of Texas at Austin), is an advertising scholar and computational social scientist whose research examines how artificial intelligence is reshaping communication, emotional expression, and engagement in digital environments. Her work sits at the intersection of advertising, social media, and AI-mediated communication (AI-MC), with a particular interest in how language helps us understand people—and how subtle changes in framing and affect influence behavior.

Before beginning her doctoral work, Sussman spent eight years owning and operating Social Distillery, one of Austin, Texas’s earliest social media marketing agencies. From 2011 until the company was sold in 2019, she and her team used social data and social listening to understand audiences and translate those insights into strategy and campaigns. Along the way, she advised or serviced nearly 90 organizations, including Facebook (now Meta), Intuit, Khoros, Micro Focus/HPE, H-E-B, Texas Dairy Queen, Chuy’s Restaurants, and John Deere. That experience—particularly her early use of social media as a source of behavioral and audience insight—continues to shape her work as both a researcher and professor.

Today, Sussman is an Assistant Professor of Advertising at Texas State University and founder of the Social Media, AI & Persuasion (SMAP) Lab. She also co-leads a research group within TXST’s Digital Media & Everyday Life Lab, collaborates with UT Austin’s Nelson Center for Brand and Demand Analytics on AI ethics initiatives, and serves as a THRC Faculty Fellow and IDEA Center Mentor. Across these roles, her work explores how emerging technologies can help us better understand—and more responsibly influence—human communication and behavior.

Sussman joined Texas State in 2022, where she teaches advertising strategy, campaigns, and graduate-level social media courses. She is a two-time nominee for Texas State University’s Presidential Award for Excellence in Scholarly/Creative Activities and has been nominated for the Mary Alice Shaver Promising Professor Award. Prior to joining Texas State, she taught at UT Austin and St. Edward’s University.