Bringing together current research strands stemming from the Festinger tradition of failed prophecy, and by observing a recent case of a prophetic group dealing with disconfirming events under a period of 210 days, I theorize on what roles cognitive dissonance, rituals and continuous prophetic adaptation play in the management of prophetic groups’ alternative world views. The traditional conception of dissonance management is reinterpreted as a process of maximizing mental desirability, which is contingent on the level of cognitive dissonance as well as cognitive activity. Through the use of rituals, prophetic groups maintain a certain mental network of categories (world) that invalidates the judgement standards of the mainstream society in favor of the prophet. Finally, prophecy itself is considered to be a device that regulates the collective level of cognitive dissonance and activity in order to maintain an ideal state of collective mental desirability; it is a tool to organize the present, rather than a prediction to be judged based on its accuracy. This sociological study is an assessment of the research on prophecy stemming from Festinger and makes the contribution of synthesizing it under the single logic of world management through the study of an empirical case.

This study contributes to the understanding of cultural forms, inspired by Cassirer’s notion of a general function manifesting in the many particular expressions of human culture. The special case of cybersemiotics (a newly established scientific discipline) is studied as a social system to make sense of how it operates as a viable cultural form. The study uses citation network analysis to map out the boundaries and communications of the cybersemiotic discipline, and then delves into its contents to qualitatively investigate selected parts of the network structure. A framework for studying and comparing cultural forms is developed.