This work raises the role of image as an agent of social transformation. The methodology used is a case study on the impact of the photograph of Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old child drowned in an attempt to flee in a pond of Syrian immigrants in Bodrum. This is one of the recent documents of social photojournalism that are most widely disseminated across national borders and have a major impact on social media. The study addresses different levels of analysis (iconographic, iconological and ethical) to capture the constitutive aspects of an image with the power of social change. As main findings, this research verifies the power of digital graphic image because of its easy-to-edit and remarkable character in the move of symbolically transforming reality and generating pronunciation and activism processes in citizens from digital environments. The results of the analysis of the case set out above show how the value of an image in social change is not only given by the scale of the tragedy or the fact it records, nor by its formal (iconographic) aspects, but by its ability to express a change of logic (iconological aspect) and to encourage processes of repropriation and public complaint. Finally, the ethical debate about its dissemination translates the problem of journalistic deontology into citizen responsibility.