摘要：Starting from the debate on the presence of plastic islands in the oceans, in this article I will report the findings of a semiotic analysis of ten articles of the “Usa e Rispetta” campaign against pollution and for a sustainable use of plastics, launched by La Repubblica newspaper on 22 April 2018. Then, I will focus on the analysis of a fanpage.it video about a mass of floating garbage in a corner of the Caribbean Sea, a video which became viral at the end of 2017. In both cases, the emotional component is strongly present, alongside with the following recurrent elements: effects of spatial decontextualization, effects of temporalization oriented towards an apocalyptic future, the use of actors with legitimizing functions (the experts). These analyses suggest the central role of emotions in mass media discourses. As a matter of facts, the appeal to emotions makes information more interesting and immediate to the public than logical and rational elements such as data, counterexamples, refutations and statistics, elements that would make the argumentation complex and articulated.
