Jen Schradie is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, based at the Toulouse School of Economics. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from UC Berkeley, with an emphasis in new media from the Berkeley Center for New Media. She also has a master’s degree in sociology from UC Berkeley and an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School. She studies social class, social media and social movements. Her broad research agenda is to interrogate digital democracy claims with empirical data. With a National Science Foundation grant, she studied the relationship between technology and democracy among social movement and labor organizations in the American South. Currently, she is examining how what she calls "Silicon Valley Ideology" intersects with French society and digital use. Before entering academia, Schradie directed six documentary films, including, The Golf War – a story of land, golf and revolution in the Philippines.” But most of her films have focused on social movements confronting corporate power in the American rural South.