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The growth and spread of new information media is often seen as part of the globalization of culture, but in fact local cultural traditions are often adapted to the new media. Field research on the new media in Kuwait demonstrates that despite the availability of numerous sources of information, including widespread access to international media, Kuwaiti national identity remains strong. At the same time, Kuwaitis have in some ways adapted the new media to the expression of their own cultural traditions and vice versa.
Communicaton is the cement of identity. It is through communication that cultures define themselves.1 In modern societies, much of this sense of shared identity is communicated through media technologies. These technologies help to transmit shared symbolic forms, a sense of group culture, and ultimately, to foster what Alexis de Toqueville calls "fellow feeling." Some observers claim that modern societies are defined by the degree to which the transmission of fellow feeling through symbolic forms is no longer restricted to contexts of face to face interaction. Instead, in modern societies, culture is "extensively and increasingly mediated by the institutions and mechanisms of mass communication."2 By implication, the more developed a society's communication industries are, the more "modern" that society appears; at the same time, the more complicated the mediation of culture becomes.
With the introduction of many-to-many communications capabilities like the Internet, modern societies like Kuwait are increasingly reminded of the complex global networks that participate in the mediation of culture. Yet analysts of the nexus between technology, culture, and politics are often perplexed by the persistence of local cultural tropes in spite of the globalization of discourse. In the Kuwaiti case, this perplexity stems from the coexistence of two forces. First, there is the growth and entrenchment of new media technologies, sustaining an ever present flow of foreign discourses within Kuwaiti media space. And second, there is the persistence of a strong sense of Kuwaiti national identity. If media technologies and texts aid "in the development of national sentiments," then what explains the adoption and impact of some tools and texts, and not others?3 The Kuwaiti case enables us to observe how a country's pre-existing identity structures, like the meaning of oil, and the impact of the Iraqi occupation, help...