FRAMEWORK V1.0 · 2026-08-10 Licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
One reading for each arc. Each takes a single function and asks what it would mean to observe it: what evidence would show the function holding, what would show it failing, and what part of it cannot be measured at all.
The readings are meant to be quoted precisely and disputed in public. Each carries its own version and date, and superseded versions stay reachable. Where a reading is answered, the answer is published beside it rather than filed away from it.
What counts as first-hand knowledge entering public view, how the quantity of it can be estimated without counting articles, and why a shortage here is invisible from the surface of a busy information environment.
What a verifiable trace looks like from the reader's side, which parts of verification leave no trace at all, and what a correction record shows that an accuracy claim cannot.
How a set of individually accurate statements can produce a false account, and what would have to be observed for the third function to be described as holding.
Why plurality is a property of the landscape rather than of a masthead, and the narrower question a governance framework can actually ask about it.
Why no publisher can perform the fifth function alone, what would count as evidence that it is happening, and the specific way this reading could turn out to be wrong.
An addendum does not replace a reading. It extends it, qualifies it or withdraws part of it, and it says which. It carries a named author and a date, and it is published as it stands, including where it creates tension with the readings it answers. Anything that changes a definition is logged in the framework change log as well.
A companion publication that accepts the normative case at the centre of the framework and then asks where governance should place its centre of gravity: in the landscape, in the technology, or in the people who produce, select and interpret information. It presses hardest on the first function, arguing that observation is selective and every publicly meaningful account is mediated, so that quality belongs in the strength and transparency of that mediation rather than in proximity to an event.
Five questions, rather than five answers:
The readings and the framework figures are CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Quote them freely with attribution, including in disagreement. No derivatives protects a text that is meant to be quoted precisely, and non commercial keeps it out of resale. This is a starting position rather than a conviction: if adoption by other institutions turns out to matter more than either, the licence should change, and the change should be logged like any other.
Addendums are a different case. Each remains the copyright of its named author, who grants the forum the right to publish it. Cite an addendum to its author, not to the forum.
Citing a reading, replying to one, or telling the editor that one is wrong: gvn@information-governance.org.