Concept
paradigm
In Kuhn, the exemplary achievements a scientific community shares, together with the beliefs, values and tools that go with them; in communication studies often used loosely for a “dominant approach”.
Paradigm is used in two senses in Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962): consensus on exemplary research achievements, and a broader “disciplinary matrix” of shared theoretical beliefs, values, instruments and techniques. In normal science a paradigm supplies puzzles and tools for solving them; when anomalies pile up, crisis and revolution follow.
In communication studies the word is often used more loosely: McQuail’s “dominant paradigm” and “alternative paradigm”, or the three paradigms of Potter and colleagues. These point to majority practice and a way of looking, not to the community consensus Kuhn meant.
Example
Potter, Cooper and Dupagne (1993): the social science paradigm was the majority in journals but could not be called “dominant” in the field.