Saturday 18 December 2021 · below the Index · plateau
Cargo ship collision off Swedish coast
Two cargo ships collided in the Baltic Sea off the Swedish coast on December 13, 2021, resulting in at least one death and one person missing. The incident triggered significant media attention focused on maritime safety and human drama.
Peak 61.9 on Monday 13 December 2021. 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 57% of all days since 2020, and the highest since Monday 13 December 2021.
How far it spread
Stayed in one vessel type — 1 of 6 vessel-type groups drew clearly more readers than usual.
Gas carriers is a small readership base — normally about 398 readers a day, so a few hundred extra makes a large multiple.
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: human drama. Trade press was 2% 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 68% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor.
How the coverage sounded
Coverage ran 75% negative overall; 25% 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 ships collide in Baltic Sea off Sweden's coastbbc.co.uk · 2021-12-13
- Two cargo ships collide in the Baltic Sea near Sweden and Denmark | News | DWdw.com · 2021-12-13
- Two cargo ships collide in Baltic, rescue underwaystraitstimes.com · 2021-12-13
- Two missing after British cargo ship collides with vessel in Baltic Seatelegraph.co.uk · 2021-12-13
- Cargo ships collide in Baltic Sea off Swedish coastmsn.com · 2021-12-13
- Two missing after cargo ship capsized off Swedish coast - World Newssina.com · 2021-12-13
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 collision off Swedish coast, peak 61.9 on 13 December 2021. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2021-cargo-ship-fire-off-sweden-baltic-collision/