Hallin, Daniel C. (1953—)

Daniel C. Hallin is a professor in the Department of Communication, University of California at San Diego. He is one of the major U.S. specialists in the relationship between mass media and politics, a subject he has studied both in national and comparative dimensions. Indeed, he has written extensively on the U.S. media system and on its comparison with other countries' systems.

His most important book is Comparing Media Systems, which he coauthored with Paolo Mancini; it represents a sort of “summa” of his theoretical thoughts and empirical analysis. In this book Hallin was able to place media analysis within an elaborated, theoretical framework that combines suggestions coming from a critical approach, essentially from Habermas's critical view of the mass media, with observations proposed by some functionalist scholars such as Jeffrey Alexander and Niklas Luhmann. Pierre Bourdieu's works on journalism have also been useful to Hallin in developing an approach to a comparative analysis of media systems that is highly original and that represents an important step in the direction of a more comprehensive understanding of how mass media and the political world interact in different social contexts.

Hallin rejects the sort of normative view of journalism that has been so diffused and common in media studies and in the vocational attitudes of journalists, and, instead, proposes to view journalistic practices and structures in a way that is more directly connected with the society in which they develop. In this way, all “imperialistic” and commonsense observation are rejected, while his empirical approach starts from real, social contingencies.

In his previous books, We Keep America on Top of the World: Television Journalism and Public Sphere (1994) and The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam, Daniel Hallin had already used a critical approach to the U.S. media environment that enabled him to look beyond the most common interpretations and to discover, as in the case of the coverage of the Vietnam War, interesting journalistic attitudes that could more fully explain what role the mass media played in producing that perception of the war that so deeply affected its outcome and therefore the entire American society.

Two other research fields characterize Hallin's work: Latin America and clientelism. Hallin is an expert in the media of Latin America, especially in Mexico, and this interest goes together with his involvement in several associations that aim at facilitating the exchange of knowledge between North and South America.

His most recent interest focuses on clientelism and the media. This relationship is observed as an ideal means to place the mass media within the most general cultural and political features of the society in which they function.