By Dulanjaya Mahagamage
1. Introduction
In 1956, sociologists Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl introduced the term “parasocial interaction (PSI)” to describe the one-sided, mediated intimacy that television viewers develop with on-screen performers. This creates an illusion of a face-to-face relationship that exists solely in the audience’s imagination. Horton and Wohl argued that television personalities became “friends” who required no reciprocation; all they needed was repeated exposure and the appearance of authenticity.
Seventy years later, this asymmetrical relationship has evolved in a more participatory environment. Social media platforms don’t just broadcast a persona; they allow audiences to comment, share, and co-create content. This transforms Horton and Wohl’s one-way parasocial relationship (PSR) into a feedback loop of perceived intimacy.
On social media, PSI intensifies through several reinforcing mechanisms: repeated exposure via algorithmic recommendations, emotionally charged storytelling that personalizes political events, a curated sense of authenticity through first-person testimonials, and identity-based communities (such as political parties, ethno-religious groups, or military entities) that generate trust even before a single fact is verified. When a public figure, such as a retired general or an intelligence officer, already carries symbolic weight, the platform does not need to create affection from scratch; it simply channels the pre-existing collective identity into one emotionally relatable figure.
This article examines how these mechanisms functioned in Facebook discussions surrounding the arrest of Major General (Retd.) Suresh Sallay, former Director of Sri Lanka’s State Intelligence Service (SIS), in connection with the investigation into the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings. By analyzing publicly available Facebook content from 10,725 posts published between April 25 and June 20, 2026, the findings suggest that PSI acted as the connective tissue linking emotional mobilization for Sallay and the simultaneous erosion of public confidence in the institutions investigating him.
2. Parasocial Interaction (PSI) in Political Communication
In politics, personalized social interaction (PSI) rarely starts from scratch; it activates existing identity frameworks. Narratives such as those centered on charismatic leaders, military heroes, and partisan loyalty already exist prior to any specific controversy and are simply redirected toward it. When followers feel they “know” a leader through repeated and emotionally engaging content, they grant that leader emotional credit. This credit takes the form of trust that replaces concrete evidence and loyalty that resists challenges or disconfirmation. Political communication research refers to this as emotional legitimacy, legitimacy derived not from institutional processes but from a profound sense of familiarity and closeness.
Online communities amplify this phenomenon through three interrelated effects. First, echo chambers gather audiences that already share specific identities (for example, ethnopolitics, Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism, veneration of the military, anti-Western sentiment, or partisan opposition to the current government), allowing PSI content to experience minimal resistance. Second, confirmation bias leads individuals to interpret ambiguous information as support for their existing beliefs rather than as an opportunity to question them. Third, collective memory, particularly relating to the thirty-year civil war and the trauma of the 2019 attacks, provides a ready-made emotional vocabulary (such as “sacrifice,” “betrayal,” and “the nation”) that can be easily applied to new figures. As a result, PSI in political discourse rarely functions as an isolated feeling; instead, it acts as networked persuasion in which personal emotions, partisan identity, and susceptibility to disinformation reinforce one another.
3. Case Background: Major General (Retd.) Suresh Sallay and the Easter Sunday Investigation
The Easter Sunday attacks on April 21, 2019, were coordinated suicide bombings targeting three churches and several hotels in Sri Lanka, resulting in the deaths of over 250 people. These attacks represent one of the most significant unresolved security failures in the country’s history. Subsequent inquiries, including those conducted by a Parliamentary Select Committee and a Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI), left many questions unanswered regarding prior intelligence warnings and possible broader complicity, which contributed to years of public distrust.
At the time of the attacks, Tuan Suresh Salley served as the Director of Military Intelligence and was later appointed as the Director of the State Intelligence Service (SIS) under President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. He was removed from this position in October 2024 following a change in government. When President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s National People’s Power (NPP) government took office in 2024, it pledged to reopen the investigation. On February 25, 2026, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) arrested Salley under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) on charges of conspiracy and failing to act on prior warnings.
The situation escalated in early June 2026 when Salley began a hunger strike and was hospitalized. This sparked protests from the opposition and Salley’s supporters, including former ministers, leading to a satyagraha demonstration outside the Colombo Fort Railway Station. These events form the basis for the observations discussed here.
4. Mapping the Facebook Discourse
The study analyzed 10,725 Facebook posts in Sinhala and English (97% in Sinhala) from 1,346 distinct accounts. These posts generated a total of 4.24 million reactions, 808,494 comments, 623,316 shares, and approximately 194 million views. Posting activity was low and sporadic throughout April and the majority of May, averaging fewer than 20 posts per day. There was a brief spike on May 20, with 308 posts related to an earlier court proceeding. However, posting activity surged sharply from June 3 onward, peaking at 1,880 posts on June 8, the day when the hunger-strike hospitalizations and the Fort Railway Station protest dominated the news cycle. The week of June 8 to 14 alone accounted for 5,995 posts, or 55.9% of the total content produced over the eight-week period. This illustrates that significant events related to the storyline (such as hospitalizations, hunger strikes, and public ceremonies), rather than the initial arrest in February, sparked a substantial increase in parasocial engagement.
Posting activity was moderately concentrated, with the twenty most active accounts, only 1.5% of all accounts, responsible for 25.8% of the posts and capturing 31.9% of total engagement. News pages like Ada Derana Sinhala and Newsfirst.lk were the most frequent posters, but engagement per post was more effective for personality-driven content. For instance, posts from politician Wimal Weerawansa averaged 9,941 interactions despite only 20 posts. Additionally, video content performed significantly better than photos, with an average of 1,218 interactions per video compared to 406 for photos. At least 184 distinct text blocks were copied and pasted across five or more accounts, resulting in 1,988 posts (18.5% of the total findings). This indicates a strong pattern of networked, talking-point amplification rather than purely organic, independent commentary.
5. Competing Narratives
Across the corpus, six recurring narrative clusters emerge, each carrying a distinct parasocial logic.
1. The Suffering War Hero
References to රණවිරු (War Hero in English) appear in 6.0% of posts. These posts typically narrate Sallay’s three decades of service and reframe his detention as the nation repaying his loyalty with cruelty. The hunger strike served as a powerful representation of this narrative: a suffering body that audiences could emotionally witness, making it the most potent parasocial device identified in the findings.
2. Torture and Victimhood
Terms describing අමානුෂික (Inhumane in English) or කුරිරු (cruel in English) treatment appear in 6.1% of posts. This cluster peaked dramatically when an AI-generated image supposedly depicting Sallay being tortured under CCTV circulated in mid-June. Independent fact-checkers later confirmed that the image was fabricated; however, by the time it was debunked, the post had already fulfilled its parasocial function, providing visual “evidence” that resonated with the audience’s pre-existing emotions.
3. Institutional Delegitimization
Posts discussing the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and the Attorney General overwhelmingly frame these institutions in adversarial terms, portraying investigators as instruments of persecution rather than neutral fact-finders. The narrative often includes themes of political revenge, suggesting that the case is less a criminal inquiry and more a politically engineered ambush.
4. Mobilization and Protest
Terminology associated with සත්යග්රහ (Satyagraha in English), referring to the Fort Railway Station demonstrations, appears in 623 posts, generating the highest average engagement. Hashtags such as #StandUpForSallay and #WeAreWithYouSallay serve as identity-affirming rallying calls rather than merely providing informational content.
5. Foreign Conspiracy and Anti-West Framing
Explicit references to Western countries or foreign actors are particularly prominent in posts regarding the diaspora. These posts claim that the investigations against Sallay are influenced by the Tamils in the diaspora, suggesting that they seek revenge due to Sallay’s contributions during the civil war.
6. Political and Social Actors
The discourse surrounding the issue was further amplified by politicians and influential public figures associated with Sinhala nationalist politics. Figures such as Wimal Weerawansa and the Buddhist monk Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara consistently framed the arrest as being motivated by Western interests, destabilizing national security, and as an act of revenge against military personnel. At the same time, the inclusion of Sallay’s mother, wife, and son in the campaign narratives personalized the issue, shifting attention from the legal proceedings to the emotional suffering experienced by his family. This personalization intensified parasocial engagement, encouraging audiences to empathize not only with Sallay but also with those portrayed as innocent victims of the investigation.
6. Parasocial Interaction Analysis
Across these clusters, the discourse showcases classic markers of parasocial interaction translated into a Sri Lankan context. Politicians created a sense of perceived intimacy directly; for instance, Wimal Weerawansa’s most successful post, which garnered 36,190 reactions, starts with a personal anecdote, a first-person disclosure that fosters a sense of closeness for an audience that has never met him. Other posts utilized moral elevation by urging supporters to feel obligated to build statues in honor of Sallay, and engaged in loyalty signaling through straightforward binary participation devices.
What is being defended is rarely the individual in a legal sense; most posts explicitly avoid adjudicating guilt. Instead, they focus on the symbolic identity that Sallay represents: the soldier-protector, the Sinhala-Buddhist nation, and the pre-2024 political order. Through repeated emotionally charged exposure, Sallay has been transformed from a specific named defendant into an emotionally safeguarded public persona. His treatment is viewed as a referendum on how the nation treats its protectors in general. This aligns precisely with what parasocial interaction theory predicts: the parasocial bond is rarely with the literal person but with the role they have come to perform for the audience’s identity.
7. Parasocial Interaction (PSI) and the Delegitimisation of the Easter Sunday Investigations
The mobilizing power of parasocial interaction for Sallay was closely linked to its damaging effect on confidence in the investigation itself. Among all posts that explicitly referenced Easter Sunday, 39.8% framed those references with political bias. Instead of viewing seven years of stalled accountability as an institutional failure, they portrayed it as a targeted act of persecution against one individual.
By focusing on Sallay’s suffering, his decades of service, and his family’s distress, supportive content systematically shifted the attention away from the substantive evidence being investigated. This included a parliamentary allegation against Sallay, stating that he had directed attackers toward a specific target. Instead, the discourse simplified the issue to a more emotionally appealing question: Is this good man being mistreated?
Criticism of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) or the Attorney-General was often recast as criticism of “the military” or the nation as a whole, merging scrutiny of specific institutional actors into an attack on national identity. This rhetorical tactic made continued questioning of institutions feel like a betrayal rather than responsible oversight.
8. Interpreting the Findings
These findings highlight a broader pattern of political parasociality within Sri Lanka’s digital information landscape. Individuals associated with the security establishment can quickly be portrayed as victims when detained, especially if there is existing support from nationalist and military-venerating narratives. Digital nationalism and parasocial interaction (PSI) reinforce each other: nationalism provides emotional frameworks, such as the ideas of “protector,” “betrayal,” and “foreign conspiracy,” while PSI offers a means to make these concepts feel personally and immediately relevant.
The impact on public trust is a weakening of institutional authority. When criticism of investigators is viewed as an attack on collective identity, accountability measures struggle to function based solely on the evidence. This situation underscores how individual figures can become emotional proxies, complicating discussions of accountability regarding past events, such as what really happened in 2019 and who is responsible. These conversations become nearly impossible to navigate in public without activating reflexive defenses of identity.
9. Conclusion
This analysis demonstrates that Parasocial Interaction (PSI) operated as the central organizing mechanism of Facebook discourse surrounding Suresh Sallay’s detention. Specifically, it manufactured intimacy with a figure most users had never met, mapped military-hero and nationalist identity categories onto a specific legal case, and reframed institutional scrutiny as an attack on collective identity. Quantitatively, this manifested in concentrated, personality-driven engagement; a steep escalation tied to embodied suffering rather than legal milestones; a heavy reliance on derisive, performative reaction types; and significant copy-paste amplification of identical talking points.
For researchers interested in social media discourse and patterns, this case underscores the need to treat PSI not as a marginal communication style that merely narrows public perceptions, but as a measurable variable in disinformation and Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior (CIB) research. This variable is operationalized through identity-prompt formats, first-person political testimony, and imagery of embodied suffering, all leveraged by ethno-nationalistic actors and politicians alongside conventional coordination methods.
Because these parasocial interaction patterns do not emerge in isolation, future research should conduct comparative analyses against other regional “hero-victim” mobilization cases designed to discredit investigations. Finally, greater scholarly and social awareness is needed to determine whether a user’s parasocial attachment to security-establishment figures measurably predicts a broader distrust in transitional justice and accountability institutions, or if it unconsciously skews their social media interactions altogether.
Dulanjaya Mahagamage is a digital rights researcher and communications professional with over five years of experience in social media analytics, trust and safety, digital governance, and policy analysis. He is currently Lead Researcher at Factum.
Factum is an Asia-Pacific-focused think tank on International Relations, Tech Cooperation, and Strategic Communications accessible via www.factum.lk.
The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the organization’s.
