It came to me from an account in Raqqa that I follow on social media. It was a punch in the stomach for me. I just felt like it was my own son lying there on the beach. What really touched me was his sneakers, because I put on my boy’s shoes in the morning. I realized that this was a very powerful image of what was happening in the Mediterranean. It immediately exploded on social media. I think I had more than 2,000 retweets in an hour or two, and then I started getting contacted by journalists who wanted commentary on why I had tweeted it. I wrote an op-ed piece about why it was important to confront Europe with this image, and that went viral, too.

The newlyweds on a train to Germany—how did you meet them?

We jumped on a train at Keleti station in Budapest at the last minute and we spent about three hours with a group of Syrians as this difficult journey was ending for them, and we saw the elation they felt. It was the last picture I took before we got off the train at the Austrian border. It got more attention on my social media feed than the Aylan Kurdi picture, which I think is wonderful. To me this is what the tragic story is all about. It’s about people fleeing brutality and trying to get a better life. As much as I appreciate the attention the Aylan Kurdi picture had, I’m much more comfortable with the picture of people trying to rebuild their lives in Europe. It’s the image I cherish most.

Why not follow the traditional human rights approach of writing reports? Why do you use social media so much?

I do those kinds of reports as well but we work in a more immediate world. You have to capture an audience. You have to capture people’s attention. By using social media we get a huge following and we’re able to put these issues on the agenda in real time. The biggest challenge is to maintain our accuracy and objectivity while we work in a much more immediate format. That’s why I focus on very factual stories. I know that couple got married the day before they left Syria and I know they’re on the way to Germany. I report these little factual vignettes on social media but I also write for Human Rights Watch. Social media is a part of the overall reporting. I have a large audience who feel like they’re along on this journey of discovery in real time on social media. And I have an audience who follows my writing, too. It’s not right to prioritize one over the other.

Do you get different types of responses on Twitter versus Facebook?

Twitter probably reaches a larger audience at times but it also tends to be a lot more shrill and shorthanded in the kind of information we can put out. I get a lot more nasty feedback on Twitter, because it is relatively anonymous. On Facebook I can be a little bit more long format. I can also decide whether to share something publicly or just with friends. It’s a more connected world on Facebook and people are more reluctant to express racist, Islamophobic or homophobic views there. I have a more passionate, intimate following on Facebook than I do on Twitter.

Do you consider yourself a human rights worker or a journalist?

I consider myself a bit of a mixture between the two. I don’t really like very traditional human rights work, which can be a little lecturing and dry, and doesn't always reach a large audience. If our aim is to save lives and expose abuses, we have to use all the tools available to us, including the use of social media, photography, and more reportage-style writing that reaches a bigger audience. I like to tell people’s stories. I don’t think I come to this work with any less objectivity than journalists bring to their work. I try to take people inside the story, whether it’s the Central African Republic, which most people don’t know about, or this journey of hope through the Balkans.

You’ve covered complex emergencies and wars, from Bosnia to Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria to the Central African Republic. How is this different, easier or harder?

In a lot of wars, there’s very little we can do to stop people from killing each other. In this situation, it’s people fleeing from conflict zones that we’ve often had a hand in creating. They are knocking on our doors asking for help. This is a situation where we are uniquely positioned to offer that help, and it’s quite brutal to see how much indifference there is. I’ve been tremendously struck by how many of these migrants and asylum seekers are families. It pains me to see fences put up and doors slammed in their faces, especially when we’re trying to fight a war against ISIS’s nihilistic terrorism. We do have to think of what it feels like to be a Muslim who is humiliated like this on the doorstep of Europe.

You’ve personally housed refugees—you took one family to an apartment in Budapest. That’s unusual. Why?

I’ve been doing that for a long time. I don’t believe in this theory of journalism, or human rights work for that matter, as having to keep our distance from the people we work with. If there is a way I can help a family to not sleep in the rain, or save a boy’s life in the Central African Republic, I’ll do it. I knew Kevin Carter and I do not want to have anyone’s death on my conscience if there’s something I can do to prevent it. That doesn’t mean I am trying to save babies around the world but if there is a simple act that I can do, I’ll do it. Some of my best friends I’ve gotten connected to through these acts.