MARA SINGER
Communication Researcher. Educator. Writer.
The message is never the whole story.
I've spent much of my career wondering why people hear one thing when we think we've said another.
Why do we trust certain people almost immediately while questioning others?
Why does a message resonate with one audience and fall completely flat with another?
Those questions have followed me through a career in journalism, marketing, and consumer research. Eventually, they led me back to graduate school to study communication more deeply.
Today, I teach business communication at the University of North Texas, conduct research on trust and authenticity, and write about the changing ways we connect with one another.
And I'm still asking questions.
The questions that keep me curious
I'm fascinated by how people decide what to believe.
Consider social media. We know an influencer may be paid to promote a product, yet we can still find that person more trustworthy than the company making it. We talk about authenticity as though everyone agrees on what it means. And now AI can produce a convincing message in seconds, raising new questions about authorship, credibility, and the people behind the words.
There's a lot to untangle.
My research explores how people interpret messages, form impressions, and decide whom to trust. Much of my work focuses on digital communication, where the relationships between people, technology, and credibility are changing quickly.
I enjoy the research process, especially when the findings challenge what I expected to discover.
Less lecture.
More discovery.
One of my favorite things about teaching is watching students discover something for themselves.
I teach business communication at the University of North Texas, where my students work on the kinds of communication challenges they'll encounter in their careers. They have to make recommendations, consider different audiences, work through disagreements, and figure out how to use AI responsibly.
We spend a lot of time practicing. Sometimes an approach works beautifully. Sometimes it falls apart, and we have to figure out why.
I've spent enough time in professional organizations to know that a great deal of communication happens without a script. I want students to develop the judgment to handle those moments.
They also have a wonderful way of challenging my assumptions. I consider that one of the benefits of the job.
About Me.
I've taken a winding path to academia. Before earning my PhD, I spent more than two decades working in journalism, marketing, communication, and consumer research. Those experiences gave me a lasting curiosity about why people believe what they believe—and how communication shapes their decisions.
Today, I'm a business communication educator and researcher at the University of North Texas. I get to study questions that have interested me for years, work with students who challenge my thinking, and continue learning along the way.