Designing Informative Technologies: How to Build Transparent, Reliable, and Equitable Information for the Social Good

This book examines how Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are designed and used to produce, organise, and circulate information, and why this matters for information integrity in contemporary digital societies. Written for scholars, designers, and practitioners, it introduces informative ICTs as a conceptual and analytical framework for understanding technologies that aim to serve the social good. Anwesha Chakraborty defines informative ICTs as systems that prioritise transparency, reliability, and equity in the information they generate and mediate. Through empirical case studies from India, the book demonstrates how ICTs can be intentionally designed to support trustworthy, accessible, and socially meaningful information. It also introduces the concept of social entropy to explain how uncertainty, diversity, and participation shape information ecosystems, and how these forces can be constructively harnessed through design. Overall, the book contributes a concrete framework for information integrity by design.