This paper reports on the results of a survey of faculty members at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) in Los Angeles, California regarding their understanding of and familiarity with the concept of fake news. With very few studies published on the attitudes of teaching faculty at universities, this study is a unique approach to the issues facing educators, knowledge creators, and information specialists. The paper examines the origins of the term “fake news”, the factors contributing to its current prevalence, and proposes a new definition. It also reports upon the attitudes that teaching faculty hold, and how they define fake news within their specific disciplines. Though nearly all surveyed faculty felt fake news was an important topic that impacted them professionally, the researchers also find that faculty across all disciplines and ranks, ages, and gender, hold widely differing conceptions of fake news. This lack of consensus may have future implications for students in particular and higher education in general and are worth exploring further.

中文翻译：

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调查假新闻：评估大学教师对假新闻的零散定义及其对教授批判性思维的影响

本文报告了对加利福尼亚州洛杉矶北岭市加利福尼亚州立大学（CSUN）的教职员工进行的一项调查结果，该调查涉及他们对虚假新闻概念的理解和熟悉。很少有关于大学教学教师态度的研究发表，这项研究是解决教育者，知识创造者和信息专家所面临问题的独特方法。本文研究了“假新闻”一词的起源，造成其当前流行的因素，并提出了新的定义。它还报告了教师的态度，以及他们如何在其特定学科中定义假新闻。尽管几乎所有接受调查的教师都认为虚假新闻是影响他们专业的重要话题，研究人员还发现，跨所有学科，职等，年龄和性别的教职员工对假新闻的观念大相径庭。缺乏共识可能会对学生尤其是普通高等教育产生未来的影响，值得进一步探讨。