Saturday 2 March 2024 · below the Index · spike
Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping
Multiple merchant vessels attacked by Houthi missiles in the Red Sea during early March 2024. The Rubymar cargo ship sank after being struck, carrying 21,000 tons of fertilizer and causing an environmental hazard. A bulk carrier was hit with three crew members killed. An MSC container ship was also damaged in separate attacks.
Peak 102.4 on Thursday 7 March 2024. 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 88% of all days since 2020, and the highest since Thursday 22 February 2024.
How far it spread
Stayed in one vessel type — 1 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 3% 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 94% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor; 64% of it was strongly negative in tone.
What the coverage said
- Rubymar cargo ship sinks in Red Sea after Houthi attackabc.net.au · 2024-03-03
- Red Sea faces 'environmental disaster' as cargo ship sinking leads to oil spill, fertiliser leak after Houthi attacksscmp.com · 2024-03-03
- Cargo Ship Struck by Houthis Sinks in Red Sea, U.S. Saysnytimes.com · 2024-03-03
- Cargo ship attacked by Houthis sinks off Yemen coastbbc.com · 2024-03-04
- Houthi rebels claim deadly strike on cargo ship near Yemen – DW – 03/06/2024dw.com · 2024-03-06
- Three Missing After Houthi Attack on Bulk Carriergcaptain.com · 2024-03-06
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 (453/781 kept) — see coverage.filter.terms
Maritime Attention Index, incident: Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping, peak 102.4 on 7 March 2024. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2024-houthi-attacks-on-red-sea-shipping/