Jen Schradie

Jen Schradie is an Associate Professor at Sciences Po, affiliated with the Centre for Research on Social Inequalities (CRIS), where her research focuses on digital democracy, digital activism, and digital inequality. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, and her work integrates perspectives from communication, labor studies, and political sociology.

Her research interests include:

• Digital democracy and political participation
• Digital activism and social movements
• Class, race, and gender disparities in digital access and production
• Technology and media
• Work, labor, and digital unionizing
• Disinformation and online hate speech

Her recent publications reveal a consistent theme: the internet does not democratize political participation but rather reproduces and amplifies existing social inequalities. Her work examines how class, institutional resources, and political ideology shape who participates in digital spaces and how. She has conducted comparative research in the U.S. and France, particularly on the startup economy and the gilets jaunes movement. Her influential book The Revolution That Wasn’t (2019) argues that conservative groups often have greater digital advantage due to resource disparities.

Her scientific contributions are recognized through affiliations with major academic networks:

• Chair, Scientific Panel on AI and Economic Inclusion, International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE)
• Co-founder, European Network on Digital Labour (ENDL/INDL)
• Affiliate, Center on Digital Culture and Society, University of Pennsylvania
• Advisory Committee Member, National Academies of Sciences – Computational Social Science
• Expert List Member, International Communication Association – Activism, Communication and Social Justice

Jen Schradie has advised multiple collaborative research projects and grants related to digital inequality and social movements, particularly during the pandemic through the CoCo project. She has also led comparative studies on gender and class in the startup economy and online hate speech against Muslims. Her research combines qualitative and quantitative methods, drawing on both online and offline data to contextualize digital participation.

She is actively involved in academic discourse through recent presentations on Web3, digital governance, and content moderation at venues such as the McCourt Institute and The Shed in New York.