The Role of Mass Media in Promoting Sports in Birjand Schools

A social phenomenon, which has dramatically developed and influenced individuals in recent years, is sports. Media can play a great role in promoting sports. The educational system also has the most important responsibility in the development and progress of any country. Cultural, political, social and sports promotion in each society depends on the attention officials pay to the qualitative and quantitative expansion of education in that country. The main reason behind this study is determining the scale of relationship between the four major roles of mass media (informing, educating, culture building, and social participation) and the development of sports in schools of Birjand. The method used in this survey is a descriptive-analytical one. To collect data we used a questionnaire consisting of 48 questions. The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by specialists and a reliability of α= 0.82 was achieved. The target population consisted of specialists (school principles and sport teachers) working in elementary, and high schools in Birjand. We used random sampling and the size of the sample was 102 (54 mangers and 48 sports teachers). To describe the data we used descriptive statistics, and in the inferential statistics part we used the Kolmogorov's test to determine the normality of our data; and to determine the meaningfulness of our data we used the Friedman and Che-Square test. The results showed that there is a meaningful relation between the four roles of the media and sports promotion at schools. The research was also able to prioritize the four roles of the media in promoting sports at schools as follows: informing, educating, culture building, and social participation.