Friday 12 January 2024 · below the Index · spike
Houthis attack ships in Red Sea
Multiple cargo ships and tankers were attacked by Houthi rebels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden during January 2024, prompting widespread route diversions and international military response. The US and UK conducted airstrikes on Houthi positions in Yemen, while shipping companies rerouted vessels around the Cape of Good Hope to avoid the conflict zone.
Peak 134.0 on Tuesday 16 January 2024. The shaded band is the incident window.
Where the attention came from
Social-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 94% of all days since 2020, and the highest since Sunday 31 December 2023.
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 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 54% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor; 11% of it was strongly negative in tone.
What the coverage said
- Latest Israel-Hamas war news and Gaza updates: Houthis target tanker as Red Sea attacks continuewashingtonpost.com · 2024-01-19
- Houthis claim responsibility for attack on US-owned cargo shipthetimes.co.uk · 2024-01-18
- Russian oil tankers sailing through Red Sea despite Houthi attackstelegraph.co.uk · 2024-01-12
- U.S. Confirms New Military Strikes in Yemen, Houthis Hit Bulk Carriergcaptain.com · 2024-01-16
- Oil tankers divert course from Red Sea after US-UK joint airstrikes on Yemen's Houthis: reportbiztoc.com · 2024-01-12
- No injuries as Houthis hit US-owned container ship: UScanberratimes.com.au · 2024-01-15
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
- composite index was above 110 in this window but never itself showed genuine elevation (z < 2.0); demoted out of tier A — see README 'Threshold tuning'.
- 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).
- 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 (554/1264 kept) — see coverage.filter.terms
Maritime Attention Index, incident: Houthis attack ships in Red Sea, peak 134.0 on 16 January 2024. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2024-houthis-attack-ships-in-red-sea/