This survey was conducted to develop and explain the functional framework of mass media in the Middle East on the basis of the social capital development in which the Voice of Islamic Republic of Iran (Voice of I.R.I.) was investigated as the case study. The research methodology is based on the Delphi with the elite approach and the mixed qualitative-quantitative strategy. The field data were collected in three stages containing the deep interviews in the first stage and the questionnaires in the second and the third stages. The qualitative data (interviews) were analyzed by the grounded-theory strategy and the quantitative data (questionnaires), whose questions were based on their previous step results, were analyzed by the descriptive statistics. After reaching the consensus of the elite panelists at the end of the third stage, the final functional framework of the research was developed and explained. The findings of the research suggest the main functions of mass media especially the Voice of I.R.I. for the social capital development, including; the provision of the causal and the contextual conditions, the utilization of the intervening agents, and the use of the active and extra-active strategies.
