The frame glossary taxonomy v1
Every story that drives maritime attention runs under a frame — the lens the coverage casts the industry in. The fortnightly edition names these frames explicitly, tagged against this controlled taxonomy so they can be counted and compared edition over edition. This layer tells us how the industry is being portrayed, not just how much attention it is getting.
The 12 frames group into 5 families — Politics, Price, People, Progress, Planet — and it is the families the fortnightly edition charts. Beneath both, every article also carries a reading of whether shipping is acting or being acted upon.
Politics
Statecraft, conflict and sanctionsVessels and trade routes in the hands of states: flag policy, treaties, naval escort and the diplomacy that opens or closes a route — alongside attacks, seizures and blockades, sanctions and dark-fleet opacity.
Shipping as geopolitical pawn/target
Vessels and trade routes as instruments or casualties of state conflict: attacks, seizures, blockades, flag politics, chokepoint brinkmanship.
Shady industry (sanctions, dark fleet, opacity)
Shipping as a secretive world of evasion: dark fleets, AIS spoofing, sanction-busting, opaque ownership, smuggling.
Price
Rates, cargo and costShipping's commercial condition and what it costs everyone else: freight and charter rates, orderbook and earnings, supply-chain disruption and resilience, and the prices that reach shelves ashore.
Supply chain fragility
Shipping as the fragile artery of globalisation; disruption framed by what it does to goods, shelves and factories ashore.
Cost-of-living conduit
Freight economics translated to consumer prices: rates, surcharges and disruption framed by what they do to the cost of living.
Freight markets
Shipping's own commercial condition: freight/charter rates, deliveries/orderbook, tonnage supply/demand, owner earnings.
People
Crews, careers and communitiesThe people who work at sea and ashore: welfare, safety, abandonment and loss — and equally training and cadet intakes, recruitment, pay and conditions, and the countries building a career pipeline.
Seafarer welfare and safety
Crews as the exploited or endangered human cost: abandonment, unpaid wages, crew-change crises, detention, deaths at sea.
Safety failure / ageing fleet
Casualties framed as systemic negligence: ageing ships, cut corners, flag-of-convenience oversight gaps, 'accident waiting to happen'.
Human drama at sea
Adventure and peril as narrative: rescues, piracy thrillers, survival stories, mutinies, mystery ships — the sea as stage.
Progress
Technology, tonnage and tradeShipping as a developing industry: new technology and vessel types, fleet renewal and newbuilding, port and route investment, digitalisation, and shipping's standing as the engine of world trade.
Technology frontier
The industry as innovator: autonomous ships, alternative fuels, wind propulsion, digitalisation, first-of-a-kind vessels.
Engine of trade (positive)
Shipping as the positive enabler of prosperity: record trade, port investment, new routes, economic lifeline stories.
Planet
Emissions, fuels and spillsShipping's environmental footprint and its response to it: carbon pricing and emissions regulation, air quality, fuel switching and shore power — plus acute pollution events such as spills and container loss.
Emissions and energy transition
Shipping's atmospheric footprint and its response to it: carbon pricing and emissions regulation, air-quality rules, fuel transition, and the industry's compliance, commitments and pushback. Covers greenhouse gases and other emissions.
Pollution event (acute)
A specific incident polluting sea or coast: oil spill, container loss, chemical leak, wreck pollution. Distinct from chronic climate framing.
Subject, or object?
Alongside its frame, every scored article records agency: whether the coverage casts shipping as the thing doing something, or the thing something is being done to. It is measured independently of tone. Coverage can be warm and passive — new funding arrives for green shipping — or hostile and active, as when operators are described cutting corners on maintenance.
The test is decision, not blame. A line that cuts corners chose to; a ship that hit a rock did not. So a casualty reads as acted upon even where the vessel is the grammatical subject of the sentence, and negligence reads as acting even where the coverage is damning. Regulators are not the industry either: when the IMO, a flag state or a coastguard moves, shipping is what is being moved on.
This matters because it changes edition to edition. In calm periods coverage portrays an industry in charge of its own destiny; in a crisis it portrays one whose destiny is set by powers beyond its control. The fortnightly edition reports where the balance sat across the fortnight, and how far the trade press and the mainstream press differed on it.
The industry is where the event landed: a vessel attacked, seized, wrecked or detained.
A condition the industry is subject to rather than causing — a rate collapse, overcapacity, an earnings hit after a casualty.
An action with no named agent, where shipping is only one plausible candidate. Scored as neutral rather than guessed at.
A practice the industry engages in, described without a single incident behind it — an explainer on how crews come to be abandoned.
A named, deliberate act: an operator sailing an uncertified vessel, a line cutting corners, a port committing to an investment.