The article makes a counterpoint between the critical paradigm, action-oriented, hegemonic in the second half of the last century, and the paradigm of scientific purity and of current theoretical chastity, which requires a distancing between subject and object. The aim is to identify continuities and discontinuities of research in journalism and communication. The author does not make a choice either recommendations, but warns about the inevitably historical aspect of social theories, endorses E. Morin's anthropoethics, his holistic-humanitarian paradigm, and the proposal of Sousa Santos to understand science as a social practice of knowledge in constant dialogue with the world.
