To describe and explain what I mean by “follow the governance”, I think it’s useful to first look at the much better known expression “follow the money”.

If you’ve seen the film “All the President’s Men“, which dramatises how journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein investigated the Watergate scandal, you may remember the scene in which Woodward’s anonymous source, Deep Throat, tells him to follow the money when the journalist complains about being stuck during the investigation.

The phrase had been used before (and, actually, Deep Throat never said it to Woodward in real life). But the film made “follow the money” into a catchy and popular three-word summary of a methodology for journalists and other researchers to uncover corruption and other wrongdoing.

Start with somebody — or some company or organisation — paying or being paid by somebody else, follow the money trail, check who’s been paying whom in exchange for what, and you’ll have the building blocks of an investigative story.

These days, journalists from many countries know the basics of the “follow the money” approach and methodology; the phrase has become part of the journalism language across the world. The Global Investigative Journalism Network publishes articles under the “follow the money” tag. The UK-based investigative newsroom Finance Uncovered teaches “Follow the money” workshops and says, “Imagine if every journalist could follow the money“. The Data Journalism Handbook 1, produced by the European Journalism Centre, has a chapter on following the money across borders. There’s a Dutch investigative newsroom called Follow the Money that covers European affairs in English as well as in Dutch. And those are just a few of many international examples.

Following the money in order to uncover corruption and wrongdoing is not the only investigative methodology there is — but it is arguably the best known internationally.

However, how the money flows, through which channels, from which types of actors to which types of actors, within which normative frameworks and by means of which established practices, is dependent on particular governance systems.

Here, I am using a wide definition of “governance”, which I think is well described in the Wikipedia entry about “governance” (as seen on 14 July 2024)_

Governance is the overall complex system or framework of processes, functions, structures, rules, laws and norms borne out of the relationships, interactions, power dynamics and communication within an organized group of individuals, which not only sets the boundaries of acceptable conduct and practices of different actors of the group and controls their decision-making processes through the creation and enforcement of rules and guidelines, but also manages, allocates and mobilizes relevant resources and capacities of different members and sets the overall direction of the group in order to effectively address its specific collective needs, problems and challenges. The concept of governance can be applied to social, political or economic entities (groups of individuals engaged in some purposeful activity) such as a state and its government (public administration), a governed territory, a society, a community, a social group (like a tribe or a family), a formal or informal organization, a corporation, a non-governmental organization, a non-profit organization, a project team, a market, a network or even the global stage. Governance can also pertain to a specific sector of activities such as land, environment, health, internet, security, etc. The degree of formality in governance depends on the internal rules of a given entity and its external interactions with similar entities. As such, governance may take many forms, driven by many different motivations and with many different results.

Be it because we take governance systems for granted or because we don’t know or understand them completely, as journalists we often fail to look at and research governance systems, and to explain them clearly and systematically to our audiences as part of our investigations.

That’s why I wanted to benefit from the popularity and familiarity many of us feel regarding the “follow the money” catchphrase, to promote this complementary methodology: yes, we should follow the money — but we should also follow the governance.

The basic concepts covered by the “follow the governance (FTG)” methodology, as I’m presenting it here, are_

• scope of the research and jurisdiction where the governance system applies
• ownership of resources and physical and digital infrastructure
• actors and stakeholders, and responsibility chain, including communities affected
• decision-making processes, including how the public can engage with them
• current norms and established practices
• timeline of the most important moments that shaped the current governance system

As an example, if we are looking into the use and abuse of personal data in online advertising, it’s important that we also look into, research in a structured way and describe explicitly, clearly and comprehensively those different aspects of the governance system that lies behind online advertising and allows actors in that field to use and abuse people’s data_

• are we investigating the whole online advertising field or is our scope only one company or one country or region? (e.g. Google or Spain or the EU)
• then, what jurisdiction are we interested in? (e.g. global, national, the EU)
• within that scope and jurisdiction, who are the legal or factual owners of the physical and digital infrastructure that makes online advertising happen?, who owns legally or factually the data people generate through their online activity?
• who are the relevant types of actors and stakeholders in the online advertising field, and who are the key actors and stakeholders of each type?, e.g. international advertising corporate bodies, big advertisers, online advertising platforms (i.e. Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok…), other intermediary companies, regulators, researchers and civil society groups looking into the topic, groups negatively affected, particularly relevant individuals…
• what are the key actors and stakeholders responsible for, whom are they accountable to, and what can they be liable for?
• how do the decision processes work?, who decides what?, who is in charge of what?
• what are the most relevant current norms regulating how the field works and what the different actors are allowed to do?, and what are the most relevant established practices that make it function that way?
• what were the most important moments, events and decisions in the recent past that led to the particular governance set-up we have today?

Normally, the stories published as part of a journalistic investigation don’t include an explicit, systematic and comprehensive description and explanation of such a governance system.

And I believe that it’s important that we journalists and the public know about and understand at least the most relevant aspects of the governance systems behind our topics of interest, including those that are most important for our public life and our democracies: air, water, food, health, housing, energy… But also: the impact of digital and online technologies on our societies, the political process itself, armed conflict, the climate and ecological crises…

By deciding first on the scope and its related jurisdiction, the FTG approach and methodology may be applied to many particular fields, sectors or activities: drinking water in a region, food production and distribution in a country, the European carbon credit market, waste collection and processing in a city, energy infrastructure in Europe, access to housing across cities, labour markets in the EU, mass tourism in one region, the global arms trade…

You can read in more detail about the whole methodology, and how it applies to editorial decision-making, the research phase, and the production of stories and other outcomes, on the next page: “the FTG methodology“.