Friday 25 June 2021 · below the Index · plateau
MSC Messina disabled by fire at sea
Container ship MSC Messina was disabled by fire with one crew member missing. The incident occurred during a period of heightened attention to seafarer welfare, as multiple crews remained stranded at sea amid pandemic-related complications.
Peak 75.6 on Wednesday 7 July 2021. The shaded band is the incident window.
Where the attention came from
Over the whole window this ran Social-led; 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. 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 76% of all days since 2020, and the highest since Saturday 5 June 2021.
How far it spread
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 →
Lead frame: freight markets. Trade press was 5% 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 20% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor; 10% of it was strongly negative in tone.
What the coverage said
- LankaWeb – Most Herbeauty Container ship MSC MESSINA disabled by fire, 1 crew missing UPDATE Photoslankaweb.com · 2021-06-25
- Container ship MSC MESSINA disabled, adrift after fire, Indian oceanfleetmon.com · 2021-06-25
- Indian Coast Guard rushes to help container ship MSC Messina on fireaninews.in · 2021-06-25
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
- tier C: only a Wikipedia article, GDELT sub-vocabulary term, or social per-term query fired — not yet confirmed as a real maritime incident (Phase C naming/is_maritime_incident does that).
- integrated and peak-day verdicts differ (smoothing artefact likely)
- coverage scored on title only (no excerpt) — measured ~8pp frame precision cost vs title+excerpt (docs/HANDOVER-incidents.md §2.3)
- coverage filtered to articles matching this incident specifically (20/943 kept) — see coverage.filter.terms
- coverage panel is based on only 20 articles (< 30) — directional, not precise
Maritime Attention Index, incident: MSC Messina disabled by fire at sea, peak 75.6 on 7 July 2021. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2021-msc-messina-disabled-by-fire-at-sea/