Sunday 11 September 2022 · below the Index · spike
Iran seizes Greek tankers in Aegean
Iran released the crew of two Greek-flagged tankers that had been seized, amid escalating tensions in the Aegean Sea. The incident occurred during a period of heightened geopolitical friction in the region.
Peak 59.9 on Monday 12 September 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 55% of all days since 2020, and the highest since Saturday 3 September 2022.
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: geopolitical pawn. Trade press was 1% 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; 3% of it was strongly negative in tone.
What the coverage said
- Iran to release crew of two seized Greek tankers -Greek seafarers uniongulf-times.com · 2022-09-12
- Iran to release crew of two seized Greek tankers – Greek seafarers unionkfgo.com · 2022-09-12
- Iran to release crew of two seized Greek tankers - Greek seafarers unionjpost.com · 2022-09-12
- Iran to release crew of two seized Greek tankers — Greek seafarers uniontimeslive.co.za · 2022-09-12
- Greek Seafarers' Union: Iran to release crew of two seized Greek tankersmiddleeastmonitor.com · 2022-09-12
- The Fiji Times » Iran to release crew of two seized Greek tankers -Greek seafarers unionfijitimes.com · 2022-09-13
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
- 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).
- naming step found more than one plausible cause in the headlines (alternatives: ['Greek Coast Guard fires on Turkish cargo ship', 'Iran seizes Greek tankers']) — attribution.confidence is low; label may be an honest compound
- 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 (87/423 kept) — see coverage.filter.terms
Maritime Attention Index, incident: Iran seizes Greek tankers in Aegean, peak 59.9 on 12 September 2022. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2022-iran-seizes-greek-tankers-in-aegean/