Can one image dramatically change the tone of discourse on a contentious and complex topic? Thanks to social media and big data, we can now answer questions like that. And in the case of the refugee crisis, the answer is yes. A photo of a dead three year-old child on a beach was seen on more than “20 million screens around the world in just 12 hours.”

+ The power of images shared on social media makes this an oddly important story: 76 Viral Images From 2015 That Were Totally Fake.