We describe small dominating sets of the incidence graphs of finite
projective planes by establishing a stability result which shows that
dominating sets are strongly related to blocking and covering sets. Our main
result states that if a dominating set in a projective plane of order q>81 is
smaller than 2q+2[q]+2 (i.e., twice the size of a Baer subplane), then
it contains either all but possibly one points of a line or all but possibly
one lines through a point. Furthermore, we completely characterize dominating
sets of size at most 2q+q+1. In Desarguesian planes, we could rely on
strong stability results on blocking sets to show that if a dominating set is
sufficiently smaller than 3q, then it consists of the union of a blocking set
and a covering set apart from a few points and lines.Comment: 19 page