H. Porter Abbott argues a narratee is an author's "intended audience." This suggests that the creator of a narrative does not arbitrarily select their chosen method, but instead crafts their intention around a specific set of receivers that either finds necessity or pleasure in taking in their respective message. As indicated in Jessica Livingston's Murder in Juarez and Barbara J. Key's Globalizing Sport narratives, people are most interested in events within which they feel involvement or that they can feel empathy or compassion for.
Sports, for example, creates the perfect appealing narrative because it is a universal concept with mass culture appeal. The popularity and conformity of the athletic audience creates a captive group of receivers because they are so large and open to the message. The mass murders of women on the bordertown of Juarez Mexico provides frightening insight into human nature, immediate concern for those living in the Juarez area, and general empathy from those living in the United States.
Although there is no guarantee that the intended audience will be the receiver of the message it is the purposefulness of the initial which makes a specific narrative appealing to a specific audience.
A narrative's appeal can be generalized into 3 main categories:
1. Necessity : For such things as school projects (textbook readings), instructional readings/ videos, etc., for events which direcrly impact the individual or the society they live in (eg. 9/11 terrorist attacks)
2. Entertainment : Novels, Movies, and other media people have a non-informative or non-essential interest in
3. Curiosity/ Status : These are grouped in the same category because for some people generally feel a need to find out what's going on. For others, people feel they must have a certain amount of knowledge about the news to keep up with those of similar social status, or to give off a certain image.
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