Sunday 4 August 2024 · below the Index · spike
Houthi missile hits container ship in Gulf of Aden
Yemen's Houthi rebels launched a suspected missile attack on a container ship in the Gulf of Aden on August 4, 2024, marking the first such attack in two weeks.
Peak 58.6 on Sunday 4 August 2024. The shaded band is the incident window.
Where the attention came from
Media-led, both over the window and on the peak day.
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 52% of all days since 2020, and the highest since Friday 26 July 2024.
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: geopolitical pawn. 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 99% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor.
How the coverage sounded
Coverage ran 99% negative overall; 23% 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
- Yemen's Houthis claim first attack on container ship in two weeks | Houthis Newsaljazeera.com · 2024-08-04
- Suspected missile attack by Yemen's Houthi rebels hits container ship in first attack in 2 weeksyahoo.com · 2024-08-04
- Missile attack by Yemen's Houthi rebels hits container ship in first attack in 2 weekstheweek.in · 2024-08-04
- First time in two weeks: Houthi missile hits container ship in Gulf of Adenisraelnationalnews.com · 2024-08-05
- Suspected missile attack by Yemen's Houthi strikes container ship; first assault in 2 weeks – Firstpostfirstpost.com · 2024-08-04
- Suspected Houthi Missile Attack Hits Container Ship in First Attack in 2 Weeksaawsat.com · 2024-08-04
Gold rule = a national or international outlet, not a trade title.
- 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: Houthi missile hits container ship in Gulf of Aden, peak 58.6 on 4 August 2024. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2024-houthi-missile-hits-container-ship-in-gulf-of-aden/