Tuesday 25 August 2020 · below the Index · spike
Oil tanker fire in Arabian Sea
An oil tanker caught fire in the Arabian Sea on August 24, 2020, with at least one fatality reported (a second engineer died in the incident).
Peak 52.7 on Tuesday 25 August 2020. The shaded band is the incident window.
Where the attention came from
Public curiosity-led, both over the window and on the peak day. 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 35% of all days since 2020, and the highest since Sunday 23 August 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: freight markets. Trade press was 17% of in-scope coverage. (Historical coverage is scored on headlines only.)
Acting, or acted upon
In 17% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor.
How the coverage sounded
Coverage ran 17% negative overall; 17% strongly so.
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
- Cargo Ship Catches Fire In The Arabian Sea, Second Engineer Diesvesselfinder.com · 2020-08-24
Gold rule = a national or international outlet, not a trade title. fewer than three independent outlets.
- 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.
- The coverage panels here rest on a small sample of articles — read them as directional, not precise.
Maritime Attention Index, incident: Oil tanker fire in Arabian Sea, peak 52.7 on 25 August 2020. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2020-oil-tanker-fire-in-arabian-sea/