Consider: Representation as a process
Thought experiment:
A process during which some agent establishes an "about" / representational link between two continuants (perhaps processes too).
In doing so, GDCs like data and information have a source. Reading text, gauging wind direction from a weather vane or bending trees, ...
The "source" of the data may or may not be intended to hold such data (text vs tree tops) Knowledge that the agent has participates in this process, and the extent or type of this knowledge can determine whether data becomes informative / misinformative, etc.
The agent has to be exposed to some concretisation of the GDC in order to decode the data such that whatever was encoded is understood completely/accurately.