The Rectorate of the University of Münster has awarded the Dissertation Award 2025 to 13 early-career researchers, honoring the best doctoral theses of the year. We are delighted to announce that Dr. Christina Okoutsidou, a former PhD student at the Chair of Marketing Management (IfM), received the award for the School of Business and Economics.

The award, which includes an endowment of 3,000 euros, is awarded to dissertations that demonstrate scientific excellence, a high degree of originality, and a significant contribution to current research.

Decoding AI Influencers
Dr. Okoutsidou’s award-winning thesis, titled “Decoding AI Influencer’s Effectiveness: Multimodal Insights for Social Media Marketing,” was supervised by Prof. Dr. Manfred Krafft.

Her research addresses the rapid transformation of social media, where content is no longer just text or photos, but a complex interplay of different modes of expression. At the same time, new types of senders are emerging: AI Influencers—artificially created figures that act like real humans online.

Key Findings
Through the analysis of thousands of Instagram posts and several online studies, Dr. Okoutsidou demonstrated how the combination of image and language impacts user perception:

• Visual Impact: Surprisingly, black-and-white images cause AI influencers to appear more human, thereby eliciting stronger reactions from users.

• Textual Impact: Vivid, imagery-laden language proves most effective when the artificial figures are depicted in a photorealistic manner.

Her work provides valuable guidance for companies on how to strategically use the interplay of visuals and text to communicate convincingly through AI influencers and remain visible in the fast-paced world of social media.

The entire team congratulates Dr. Christina Okoutsidou on this prestigious recognition!