The (in)effectiveness of product-recalls

Utrecht University’s Daniel Janssen kicked off the 2008-2009 DiO Interactive Workshop Series with an interesting research talk on the genre and framing of consumer product recalls. Daniël’s experimental research shows that image management strategies which minimize or maximize threats to consumers have little or no effect on the reader (as measured by reader response rates of fictitious, manipulated product recalls). In passing, Daniël made some insightful comments about the pros and cons of quantitative applied linguistic research.