Jen Schradie is a digital sociologist at the Centre de Recherche sur les Inégalités at Sciences Po in Paris. A graduate of Duke University and the Harvard Kennedy School, she received her Ph.D. in sociology and new media at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to peer-reviewed journal articles, her work on digital democracy has been featured on CNN and the BBC, as well as in The New Yorker, TIME, The Washington Post, France Culture, and Le Monde, among others. Schradie is a frequent analyst on France 24. Her Harvard University Press book, “The Revolution That Wasn’t: How Digital Activism Favors Conservatives,” won the 2020 Charles Tilly Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book Award from the American Sociological Association, and was recently published in French. WIRED chose her book as one of its top summer reads, noting, “Schradie explains that, while Black Lives Matter and #MeToo capture headlines, it’s traditionally powerful conservative groups who have used digital tools to create tangible change. Hers may not be the internet culture take you want…but it’s likely the one you need.” Schradie’s research has been awarded grants from the National Science Foundation, the AXA Foundation, the McCourt Institute, and the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques. Her areas of study span the digital divide, digital activism, digital labor, and digital democracy. Her current comparative project focuses on gender and class differences in the startup economy in France and the U.S., and another compares the digital disinformation diffusion between France and the U.S. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods with online and offline data, she contextualizes disparities and variation of participation in digital society. Schradie was awarded the Public Sociology Alumni Prize at the University of California, Berkeley, and has directed six documentary films. She plays the banjo and also played a yoga student in a Madonna movie.
