Thursday 9 September 2021 · below the Index · spike
Container ship runs aground in Suez Canal
A container ship ran aground and briefly blocked the Suez Canal on September 9, 2021. The incident caused renewed attention to shipping chokepoints following the earlier Ever Given blockade.
Peak 68.1 on Thursday 9 September 2021. The shaded band is the incident window.
Where the attention came from
Over the whole window this ran Media-led; on the peak day itself it read Mixed. 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 66% of all days since 2020, and the highest since Wednesday 4 August 2021.
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: engine of trade. 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 0% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor.
How the coverage sounded
Coverage ran 0% 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
- Déjà Vu: Bulk Carrier Suffers 'Temporary Delinquency' Incident In Suez Canalgcaptain.com · 2021-09-09
- Suez Canal briefly blocked as container ship runs agroundmsn.com · 2021-09-09
- Suez Canal blocked AGAIN as container ship runs aground months after global meltdownthesun.co.uk · 2021-09-09
- Bulk carrier vessel runs aground briefly blocking Suez Canalnbcnews.com · 2021-09-09
- Suez Canal blocked briefly as cargo ship runs aground | Hellenic Shipping News Worldwidehellenicshippingnews.com · 2021-09-09
- Cargo Ship Stuck in Suez Canal Freed After 15 Minutesbusinessinsider.com · 2021-09-09
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.
- The coverage panels here rest on a small sample of articles — read them as directional, not precise.
Maritime Attention Index, incident: Container ship runs aground in Suez Canal, peak 68.1 on 9 September 2021. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2021-container-ship-runs-aground-in-suez-canal/