Saturday 20 August 2022 · below the Index · spike
Chemical tanker and cargo ship collide near Japan
A chemical tanker and cargo ship collided near southwestern Japan on August 20, 2022, generating significant media coverage focused on the incident and safety concerns.
Peak 87.2 on Saturday 20 August 2022. The shaded band is the incident window.
Where the attention came from
Media-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 82% of all days since 2020, and the highest since Wednesday 20 April 2022.
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: human drama. 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 91% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor.
How the coverage sounded
Coverage ran 93% negative overall; 0% 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
- Chemical tanker, cargo ship crash near southwestern Japansfgate.com · 2022-08-20
- A chemical tanker and cargo ship crashed near southwestern Japannpr.org · 2022-08-20
- Chemical tanker collides with cargo ship off Japancountypress.co.uk · 2022-08-20
- Chemical tanker, cargo ship crash near Japan | Newspoandpo.com · 2022-08-20
- Japanese Chemical Tanker Crashes Into Cargo Ship off Coast of Japaninsurancejournal.com · 2022-08-22
- Chemical tanker, cargo ship crash near southwestern Jap...accesswdun.com · 2022-08-20
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: Chemical tanker and cargo ship collide near Japan, peak 87.2 on 20 August 2022. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2022-chemical-tanker-and-cargo-ship-collide-near-japan/