Voices of Media Literacy: Guillermo Orozco Gomez
 |
GUILLERMO OROZCO GOMEZ
DATE OF INTERVIEW: FEB. 8, 2019
INTERVIEWER: TESSA JOLLS
(QUOTE)
“…with the years, I have come to the feeling (a feeling for now, not yet a conviction) that we, media educators, have to abandon emphasis on teaching about the media and about our ideal relationship with them, in order to emphasize how to deal and to be creative with media, and even transcend that. This includes the discussion of audience’s communication rights, on the one hand, and on the other, push audiences to be “hackers”. In this endeavor, our role as media educators would be more of a companion and as facilitator to get them connected to others, to feed their creativity through technological devices and information…We need to keep in mind and heart the hope that we can transform the lives of citizens as audiences.”
BIOGRAPHY OF GUILLERMO OROZCO GOMEZ
Dr. Guillermo Orozco Gómez serves in the Divisions of State Studies and Society, Cultural Studies, Communications Studies, Education Studies at the University de Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. He earned masters degrees in communication and in education, and a doctor of education from Harvard University after earning his undergraduate degree in communication sciences at the Jesuit University of Guadalajara (ITESO); he expanded his pedagogical studies at the University of Cologne. He is active in the Mexican Academy of Sciences, a member of the SNI, level III and a participating member of UNESCO’s UNITWIN Network for Media and Information Literacy, as well as the Global Alliance for Partnerships in Media and Information Literacy (GAPMIL).
Selected Questions:
Please tell us how you became involved in media education? What attracted you to the field?
What were some of your early experiences?
What were some milestones that you noted along the way?
What did you decide to do to achieve your goal of helping people understand media?
In regards to the field of media education and media literacy, do you feel that you’ve seen change in the field itself as well as just in your conditions in Mexico?
Where would you like to see things go?
When you think about where you would like to see the field to go, you’d like to see more emphasis on discovery, on production, on exploration. Are you seeing that media education is going in that direction, and that there is more acceptance of that educational philosophy, or do you feel like it’s being frustrated at a very deep level?
Do you have any advice or any special message for media education practitioners?
For complete text of interview go to PDF.