Investigating the Role of Mass Media in Cultural Development of Iran Amateur and Professional Sports

The purpose of this research is to investigate the roles of mass media (cultural, Educational, information and social participation stimulation) on cultural development of Iran amateur and professional sports in 2013.
Research method is descriptive-correlation. To gather data, library research (documents, literature review) and the field study (interviews and questionnaires) were used. The population consist of all the experts and managers in the field of sport and media whose number is 360. Sampling method was randomly and sample size was 186. For analyzing research hypothesis, t test, Pearson correlation, confirmatory factor analysis were used by SPSS software and Lisrel software. Content validity was used in order to assess the validity of questionnaire. The reliability of the questionnaire was determined by calculating Cronbach's alpha coefficient which its value was 0.898.
Research hypotheses at the significance level of 0.05 were confirmed and the results showed significantly positive relationship between roles of mass media and cultural development of amateur and professional sports. Based on means, effective factors on the cultural development of professional sports have been ranked. The cultural role of mass media took the first place and educational, information, and social participation stimulation role were ranked the next ones respectively.
Participants believed that despite the mass media's effect on sport and cultural development, it is not considered appropriately. Furthermore, more sport programs of media were related to championship and professional sport. But, amateur sports were paid less attention. Therefore, an appropriate applied plan is required in order to interact with the media and use its capacities for the cultural development of sports in different dimensions.