Lighting the Campfire: The creation of a community of interest around a media company

Journal article, 2002

This article describes a strategy for community building, labeled cognitive dominance. The strategy highlights the economic value of the concepts enactment and storytelling in a network of people. The article links community theory with network economics and strategy in the community setting and argues that network effects can be reaped through the creation of the community. The cognitive dominance strategy in implementation is illustrated in a single case study from the Swedish media industry on how a company extensively used such a strategy. The company aimed to create a community of interest around its product. To do this, the company needed to gain attention by growing in importance in the public debate, and use storytelling with a distinguished rhetoric to, more evidently jointly create a reality with its audience. The cognitive dominance strategy also allowed the media company to go through changes, as it built upon change itself.