The aim of this study is to provide a model for promoting citizens' water literacy for sustainable media-based development. According to the purpose of this research, it is an applied and exploratory type that has been obtained by the method of Strauss and Corbin's systematic method of data foundation theory. Due to the qualitative approach of the research, in-depth and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 34 experts in the fields of environment, water, social sciences, and communications using theoretical sampling. Then the data were analyzed and 1120 primary codes of open coding, 71 categories of axial coding, and 23 main factors of selective coding were identified. The main contribution of this research is the promotion of water literacy, which have been formed according to the causal conditions (targeting and policy-making in water literacy, water valuation, water attitudes, water skills, water knowledge, literacy promotion), the underlying factors (media diversity) as well as the intervening factors (media politicization, journalists' dependence on sources of power), which was obtained through the strategies such as a change in educational system, pathology of educational master plans, interaction of industry, educational institutions and universities, promotion of social capital, interaction with media, audience, media greening, complete and rich media content, institutionalization of water discourse, agile media interaction. In the second stage, in order to weigh the causal conditions and strategies, hierarchical analysis was used. The results revealed that among the causal conditions, targeting and policy-making were the most important priorities in water literacy.
