Ben Rochford

I’m a Sociology PhD candidate here at Duke and an early career Computational Social Scientist. I did my undergrad in Computer Science at Georgia Tech. I investigate the societal impacts of social technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Online Communities, and find ways to build systems that facilitate healthy individual experiences and a world that is less divided.

Current Duke Appointments & Affiliations

Student Sociology, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences

Recent Scholarly Works

A Sociological Turing Test: Social Identity Cues Shape Who is Classified as Human Online

Preprint · July 23, 2025 Full text Cite

Leveraging Symptom Search Data to Understand Disparities in US Mental Health Care: Demographic Analysis of Search Engine Trace Data.

Journal article JMIR mental health · January 2023 BackgroundIn the United States, 1 out of every 3 people lives in a mental health professional shortage area. Shortage areas tend to be rural, have higher levels of poverty, and have poor mental health outcomes. Previous work has demonstrated that ... Full text Cite

Leveraging Symptom Search Data to Understand Disparities in U.S. Mental Health Care: Demographic Analysis of Search Engine Trace Data (Preprint)

Preprint · October 6, 2022 Full text Cite

View All Scholarly Works

External Links

Personal site My Google Scholar page My LinkedIn profile The Polarization Lab