IB Digital Society SL study guide
IB Digital Society SL · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
IB Digital Society Standard Level is a Diploma Programme subject that examines how digital systems shape - and are shaped by - people, communities and institutions. It is not a programming or IT-support course. It asks you to treat technology as a social phenomenon: who benefits, who is excluded, which values are built into a system, and what could plausibly be changed. It suits students heading into policy, law, media, ethics, design or social science, and equally those going into technical fields who want to understand the human context of what they build. Topics on this exam: Digital systems, Digital society, and Digital innovation. The IB Digital Society SL study guide has 3 sections and about 1,184 words.
01Digital systems
This domain tests whether you can explain how digital systems work and how design choices shape performance, security and usability. Expect questions that ask you to identify components, trace a data flow, or justify a design trade-off rather than name hardware. A system is components, relationships, a boundary and a purpose, with inputs, processes, outputs and feedback. Behaviour emerges at system level: an app can be perfectly coded and still misroute drivers through a faulty feedback loop.
379 words, about 2 min02Digital society
This domain tests how digital systems reshape relationships between people, communities and institutions: who benefits, who carries risk, and whether a claim is supported by evidence. Strong answers name stakeholders, a mechanism and a judgement; weak ones simply assert that technology changes society. Stakeholder analysis. Name who is affected - users, non-users, operators, vendors, regulators, future generations - their interests and their power.
391 words, about 2 min03Digital innovation
This domain tests how digital products, services and processes come into being and spread: why some are adopted, some stall, and some displace what came before. Precision matters - new, improved and disruptive are not synonyms. Invention, innovation, diffusion. An invention is a new idea or artefact; innovation is its implementation in a market or organisation; diffusion is how it spreads through a population over time.
414 words, about 2 min