Saturday 5 December 2020 · below the Index · spike
Cargo ship attacked off Yemen coast
A cargo ship was attacked off the Yemen coast in early December 2020. UK Maritime Trade Operations confirmed awareness of the incident on December 5, though circumstances remained unclear. The attack occurred amid ongoing regional maritime security concerns.
Peak 55.8 on Wednesday 9 December 2020. The shaded band is the incident window.
Where the attention came from
Over the whole window this ran Mixed; on the peak day itself it read Media-led. When the two differ, the fast signals (social, news) spiked and faded while the slow ones (search, research) carried the tail. Mixed means no single signal dominated — the attention was spread across search, research, news and social. Social here is X alone — Bluesky only joins the series from July 2024 — so its level isn't directly comparable with today's series, though its share of this incident is real.
Bar = share of the extra attention over the whole window; the tick marks the share on the peak day alone, where the two differ.
How unusual it was
This was above 45% of all days since 2020, and the highest since Saturday 26 September 2020.
How far it spread
No vessel type moved — 0 of 6 vessel-type groups drew clearly more readers than usual.
Readers here means readers of the Wikipedia article on each vessel type — the same source as the Research signal, not news coverage — so an incident can dominate the news without moving this panel. Bars start at 1× — normal readership for that vessel type, the weeks before the incident. Grey = no clear lift. "Over time" shows each group's daily readers through the window; "All 12 articles" breaks the six groups back into their members.
How it was framed the frame glossary →
Lead frame: geopolitical pawn. Trade press was 0% of in-scope coverage — the story had left the trade press and gone mainstream. (Historical coverage is scored on headlines only.)
Acting, or acted upon
In 85% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor.
How the coverage sounded
Coverage ran 90% negative overall.
Each article is scored on a five-step scale from strongly negative to strongly positive; the bar is the share of coverage at each step.
Sample of the headlines
- UK Maritime Trade Operations says aware of attack on vessel off Yemen coastreuters.com · 2020-12-05
- Cargo ship attacked off Yemen under unclear circumstancesapnews.com · 2020-12-05
- Vessel Attacked off Yemen Coast: UK Maritime Trade Authoritynaharnet.com · 2020-12-05
- UPDATE 1-UK Maritime Trade Operations says aware of attack on vessel off Yemen coastthesundaily.my · 2020-12-05
- Cargo ship attacked off Yemen's coastthenationalnews.com · 2020-12-05
- Cargo ship attacked off Yemen under unclear circumstances - World Newscastanet.net · 2020-12-05
Gold rule = a national or international outlet, not a trade title.
- social = X only before Bluesky (2024-07-01); not comparable with today's series
- Registered in a single underlying series only — one vessel-type article, news term or social query — and never moved the Index itself.
- The coverage panels count only articles matched to this incident specifically.
Maritime Attention Index, incident: Cargo ship attacked off Yemen coast, peak 55.8 on 9 December 2020. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2020-cargo-ship-attacked-off-yemen-coast/