Abstract This study was designed to investigate the effectiveness of public relations firms in changing or building the public's impression of media personalities at through media representations. The main hypothesis of the study was that participants would form an impression of the presented media figure in accordance with the orientation of the media depiction they receive. A total of 26 undergraduate students recruited from Simon Fraser University's Psychology 201 course participated in this study. Participants were asked to complete a questionnaire that asked them to indicate their familiarity with the media personalities, read short descriptions, and indicate their impressions of the media personalities. As expected, it was found that participants who received positive descriptions in the media indicated positive impressions of the media figure, and those who received negative descriptions in the media indicated negative impressions of the media figure. Given these findings, it is conceivable that public relations firms achieve their success by harnessing the power of different mass media. Effectiveness of public relations firms: The effects of media descriptions on impressions of media figures. public and shape public opinion by publishing stories in the media. Interestingly, the public relations sector has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry that has become an integral part of modern economic and political life (Corporate Watch UK, 2003). Considering the ramifications of the public relations industry, this research investigated how public relations firms construct or modify the public's impression of their client through mass media. Mass media...... middle of paper ......ratewatch.org/?lid=1570Graber, DA (1988). News processing: How people tame the information tide (2nd ed.). New York: Longman. Hubbard, C.J., DeFleur, ML, & DeFleur, L.B. (1975). Mass media influences on public conceptions of social problems. Social Problems, 23(1), 22-34.Kiousis, S. (2003). Approval and job favorability: The impact of media attention to the Monica Lewinsky scandal on public opinion of President Bill Clinton. Mass Communication and Society, 6(4), 435-451. Kiousis, S., Bantimaroudis, P. and Ban, H. (1999). Candidate image attributes: Experiments on the substantive dimension of second-level agenda setting. Communication Research, 24(4), 414-428.Verser, R. and Wicks, RH (2006). Voter Impression Management: Use of Images on Presidential Candidate Websites During the 2000 Campaign. Journal of Communications, 56, 178-197.