Trust in data practices and data-driven systems is widely seen as both important and elusive. A data trust deficit has been identified, to which proposed solutions are often localised or individualised, focusing either on what institutions can do to increase user trust in their data practices or on data management models that empower the individual user. Scholarship on trust often focuses on typologies of trust. This paper shifts the emphasis to those doing the trusting, by presenting findings from empirical research which explored user perspectives on the data practices of the BBC. These findings challenge the assumption that localised or individualised solutions can be effective. They also suggest that conceptualisations of trust in data practices need to account for the complex range of factors which come into play in relation to trust in data and so move beyond the production of typologies. In this paper, we propose the concept of 'complex ecologiesoftrust'asawayofaddressingalloftheseissues.

This paper examines the dynamics of hope in creative industries in the city of Accra in Ghana. Building on theoretical insights from geography, anthropology and sociology that have mobilized the concept of hope as an analytical category, we examine the economic actions and entrepreneurial behaviour of creative entrepreneurs working in “precarious geographies”, i.e. locations where precarity is not a deviation from the norm but a constant and longstanding feature. Drawing on in-depth interviews, we contend that in conditions of radical and pervasive precarity, hope represents a distinct form of work in which the potentialities of the moment extend the present into the future, while the future, however hazy and unimaginable, affects the economic vitality of the present. By unpacking three dominant practices of hopeful orientation to futurity enacted by creative workers in Accra, namely hustling, waiting, and spiritualizing, we demonstrate the usefulness of hope as a concept in analysing economic action and labour dynamics.

Low levels of public trust in data practices have led to growing calls for changes to data-driven systems, and in the EU, the General Data Protection Regulation provides a legal motivation for such changes. Data management is a vital component of data-driven systems, but what constitutes ‘good’ data management is not straightforward. Academic attention is turning to the question of what ‘good data’ might look like more generally, but public views are absent from these debates. This paper addresses this gap, reporting on a survey of the public on their views of data management approaches, undertaken by the authors and administered in the UK, where departure from the EU makes future data legislation uncertain. The survey found that respondents dislike the current approach in which commercial organizations control their personal data and prefer approaches that give them control over their data, that include oversight from regulatory bodies or that enable them to opt out of data gathering. Variations of data trusts – that is, structures that provide independent stewardship of data – were also preferable to the current approach, but not as widely preferred as control, oversight and opt out options. These features therefore constitute ‘good data management’ for survey respondents. These findings align only in part with principles of good data identified by policy experts and researchers. Our findings nuance understandings of good data as a concept and of good data management as a practice and point to where further research and policy action are needed.

Filmmakers in Nairobi are embedded within transnational circuits of cinematic production and distribution. Many make use of Euro-American funding to make their films and seek to show their films in prestigious festivals outside Africa, but in so doing they are critiqued by scholars and critics who worry that the involvement of outsiders in African cinema curtails filmmakers' creative freedom. This sort of criticism does not account for the fact that Euro-American audiences and filmmakers from elsewhere might share a common taste in stories. Based on an eight month period of research in Nairobi in 2014-2015 where I conducted 31 expert interviews with 27 filmmakers, I argue Nairobi-based filmmakers are members of a transnational middle class, with transnational experiences and tastes, and that accounting for this leads to new understandings of the production and circulation of their films and African film more broadly.

In the emerging field of critical data studies, there is increasing acknowledgement that the negative effects of datafication are not experienced equally by all. Research on data and discrimination in particular has highlighted how already socially unequal populations are discriminated against in data-driven systems. Elsewhere, there is growing interest in public perceptions of datafication, amongst academic researchers interested in producing 'bottom up' understandings of the new roles of data in society and non-academic stakeholders keen to establish positive perceptions of data-driven systems. However, research into public perceptions rarely engages with the issue of inequality which is so central in data and discrimination scholarship. Bringing these two issues together, this paper explores public perceptions of datafication through the lens of inequality, focusing on the relationship between understandings and feelings within these perceptions. The paper draws on empirical focus group research into how audiences perceive the data practices that signing in to access BBC digital services enable. The paper shows how inequalities relating to age, dis/ability, poverty and their intersections played a role in shaping perceptions and that these social inequalities informed understandings of and feelings about data practices in complex and diverse ways. It concludes with reflections on the significance of these findings for future research and for data-related policy. ARTICLE HISTORY