Mr. Gordon Farrer
Details
Department: School - Media & Communication
Campus: City Campus Australia
gordon.farrer@rmit.edu.au
ORCID: 0000-0002-0078-1148
About
25 years as a journalist in a range of media and roles.
This includes nearly 12 years at The Age as section editor (including Green guide, Opinion, Graphics, locum role), writer, reviewer and various productions roles.
Research fields
- 470105 Journalism studies
Teaching interests
In 2019, created and set up the Fact Checking & Verification course in the Journalism program (awarded the 2023 JERAA Award for Outstanding Teaching in a Journalism Program)
The course is compulsory for journalism students and also available to all RMIT students as an option in their program.
The course covers:
• the origins and nature of misinformation/disinformation and the polluted information ecosystem's impact on public discourse and democratic institutions
• what makes information credible or not credible
• the impact of AI on knowing what is "true"
• critical thinking and its application to assessing the trustworthiness of information
• advanced search skills – including the judicious use of AI
• the use of OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) tools and investigative approaches to verify, debunk or deeply explore various targets
Research interests
Journalism and Democracy; Ethical Journalism; Public Discourse; Fact Checking & Verification; Online Search and OSINT Tools
