Second thoughts on the journalistic paradigm: refining Kuhn’s concept for journalism studies

This article offers a conceptual refinement of the journalistic paradigm by revisiting its Kuhnian roots and critically adapting Thomas Kuhn’s notion of the disciplinary matrix to journalism studies. While widely used, the paradigm concept in journalism has often suffered from semantic ambiguity, metaphorical overuse, and epistemological mismatch. Addressing these limitations, it is argued here that journalism—unlike science—should be understood as operating through an ideological rather than an epistemological matrix. Drawing on Kuhn’s fourfold schema ( symbolic generalizations, models, values, and exemplars), an original framework is proposed to clarify the internal architecture of the journalistic paradigm. Through a comparative reconstruction of each matrix component in science and in journalism, this new conceptualization strengthens the theoretical foundations of journalism studies and provides a flexible tool for analyzing the diversification of journalistic practices in the contemporary media landscape.