Suran's research primarily focuses on media effects in relation to medical and science news. She has also researched journalism law and ethics, gatekeeping practices on social news sites, and the sexualization of politics in magazine imagery.

Her work has been presented at a range of conferences, including the Association of Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, the International Communication Association, the McCombs Healthcare Symposium, the National Communication Association, and the Communicating Diversity conference at Texas A&M University. Her studies have also been accepted to the American Journal of Infection Control, Communication Research Reports, First Monday, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, Journalism Studies, and the Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia. Her first-author study on how Reddit users covered the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing is scheduled for publication in Journalism Studies and also won a first-place paper award at the 2015 AEJMC conference in San Francisco.

Suran has also contributed book chapters to At issue: Do veterans receive adequate health care? as well as From Twitter to Tahrir Square: Ethics and the social media. Her research also has been featured in Millennials, News, and Social Media: Is News Engagement a Thing of the Past?

PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL ARTICLES

Bock, M. A., Suran, M., & González, L. M. B. (2018). Badges? Who needs them? Police press credential policies, professionalism, and the new media environment. Journalism.

Suran, M., & Kilgo, D.K. (2017). Freedom from the press? How anonymous gatekeepers on Reddit covered the Boston Marathon bombing. Journalism Studies.

Crook, B., Glowacki, E. M., Suran, M., Harris, J. K., & Bernhardt, J. M. (2016). Content analysis of a live CDC Twitter chat during the 2014 Ebola outbreak. Communication Research Reports, 33(4), 349–355.

Kilgo, D. K., Yoo, J. J., Sinta, V., Geise, S., Suran, M., & Johnson, T. J. (2016). Led it on Reddit: An exploratory study examining opinion leadership on Reddit. First Monday, 21(9).

Kim, J. W., Kim, Y., & Suran, M. (2015). Emergency-response organization utilization of social media during a disaster: A case study of the 2013 Seoul floods. Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia, 14(2), 5–15.

Lazard, A. J., Scheinfeld, E., Bernhardt, J. M., Wilcox, G. B., & Suran, M. (2015). Detecting themes of public concern: A text mining analysis of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Ebola live Twitter chat. American Journal of Infection Control, 43(10), 1109–1111.

Suran, M., Holton, A. E., & Coleman, R. (2014). Topical punch: Health topics as drivers of idiosyncratic reader responses to online news. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 91(4), 725-739.