Wednesday 15 July 2020 · below the Index · spike

Iran shipyard fires destroy multiple vessels

Type fireWhere IranWindow 2020-07-15 → 2020-07-16 (2 days)

Multiple ships caught fire and were destroyed at an Iranian shipyard on July 15, 2020, in what officials described as mysterious incidents. At least 7 boats were reported to have caught fire at the facility.

Peak 58.2 on Thursday 16 July 2020. The shaded band is the incident window.

Where the attention came from

Search
0%
Research
0%
News
24%
Social (X only)
76%

Social-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

58.2
Index at peak (50 = calmest year)
53%
of days since 2020 rank below it
2 days
for the extra attention to halve
5 days
back to the pre-incident level

This was above 53% of all days since 2020, and the highest since Thursday 25 June 2020.

How far it spread

Tankers
Bulk carriers
Container & cargo ships
Gas carriers
Car carriers (ro-ro)
Shipping in general

No vessel type moved — 0 of 6 vessel-type groups drew clearly more readers than usual.

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 →

Progress
38%
Politics
34%
Price
16%
People
9%
Planet
2%

Lead frame: engine of trade. Trade press was 10% 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

entirely acted uponmostly acted uponneutralmostly actorprimary actor

In 32% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor; 0% of it was strongly negative in tone.

What the coverage said

  • The Day - 200,000 seafarers fear there's no plan to get them off ships - News from southeastern Connecticuttheday.com · 2020-07-12

Gold rule = a national or international outlet, not a trade title. fewer than three independent outlets.

Data for this incident (JSON)

Maritime Attention Index, incident: Iran shipyard fires destroy multiple vessels, peak 58.2 on 16 July 2020. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2020-seafarer-repatriation-crisis-during-covid-19-pandemic-2/

← All incidents