The offi­cial Oscar nom­in­a­tions are out, and there’s a movie up for best picture that has a lot to say about social media and the online com­mu­nic­a­tions revolu­tion sweeping the world.

The Social Network? Hell, no. I’m talking about The King’s Speech.

Set mostly in the years leading up to the Second World War, The King’s Speech deals with the extraordinary rela­tion­ship between speech ther­apist Lionel Logue and Albert, Duke of York. Albert has a per­sistent stammer, an afflic­tion that might have gone largely unre­marked in past gen­er­a­tions. But this is the era of radio, and when he ascends (a little relu­cantly) to the throne as King George VI, he must deliver an address to a nation suf­fering from grave fear and doubt.

(Spoiler alert: If you have some know­ledge of history, you are prob­ably assuming his address was at least good enough to avoid demor­al­izing the nation and forcing Britain’s capit­u­la­tion to the Nazis. And you are correct. Also, you were prob­ably a little sur­prised by the ending of Inglorious Bas­terds.)

This is the story of a friend­ship that crosses some very deep divides of class and colo­ni­alism. But it’s also a story of entrenched insti­tu­tions con­fronting the trans­form­a­tional changes brought about thanks to tech­no­lo­gical innov­a­tion.

The Social Network was fascinating, engrossing and entertaining… but it had surprisingly little to say about Facebook or the larger social media revolution, and how they affect our daily lives. Instead, the movie was more about sacrificing friendships for the sake of a larger business vision.

While The Social Network contented itself with (a version of) the story of Mark Zuckerberg, The King’s Speech touched on the chan­ging rela­tion­ship between the public and those in power, who have had a long time to become used to deciding when, where and how any com­mu­nic­a­tion will take place between them.

That’s a timely theme for anyone watching the past day’s events unfold in Tunisia and Egypt — or, for the matter, the past decade’s events in much of the rest of the world.

A version of this post appeared on ReadWriteWeb and Noise to Signal.

I’ve been teaching social media fundamentals in the UBC  and Emily Carr University continuing studies programs for nearly two years now. Early on in every course, I show students how to use iGoogle (and similar services) into a social media dashboard, displaying the latest results from online searches, must-read blogs and other sources.

The key to it all is the process of turning a feed into an iGoogle widget. (I know: Google calls them gadgets. Can’t we all just get along?) And this year, it finally dawned on me that it might be handy to have a video reference my students can fall back on in case my in-class demo wasn’t quite as memorable as I’d hoped.

And so, in case it’s useful to you…

(And if these can be helpful in your own trainings, feel free to use them.)

Ever feel like you’re working for a firm called Weneda Communications?

You know what I mean. You have an endless stream of people knocking on your office door and saying, “Hey, Weneda Facebook Page.” Or “Weneda blog.” Or “Weneda YouTube channel.”

(At least Weneda has changed with the times. A few years ago, it would have been “Weneda leaflet” or “Weneda newspaper ad.”)

Thing about Weneda Communications is, they’re great at production. They know how to crank it out. They’re just not terribly strong on why.

At Weneda, they don’t think much about strategy. They go from problem to tactic in a single step:

“People are criticizing our customer service record.” “Weneda podcast.”
“Nobody knows about this issue.” “Weneda Twitter feed.”
“There’s a crazed elephant stampeding down the hallway towards us.” “Weneda web app.”

What they don’t do is ask a few intermediate questions, like “Who do we want to reach?” “What do we want to motivate them to do?” or “Exactly how did you get past security?”

Without those questions, there’s no real way to measure success… except, inevitably, to notice that the problem seems to still be around, just as bad as ever.

It’s rarely easy to be the one who puts a stick in the spokes at Weneda… but it has to be done. Someone has to say “Hold on. Let’s take a step back and look at the big picture.”

In other words, before Weneda vehicle – whether it’s a leaflet or a mobile app – Weneda Strategy. And Weneda Plan.

I just marked the umpteenth repeat appearance of an offensive, uninteresting or repetitive Facebook ad as offensive, uninteresting or repetitive. Facebook responded, as always,

Thanks for your feedback. Over time, this information helps us deliver more relevant ads to you.

You’re welcome. Let me know when “over time” actually starts, will you?

Two back-to-back stories on Wired’s Danger Room may well presage a change in the way organizations approach social media.

Unfollowed: Pentagon Deletes Social Media Office:

At a time when Facebook has 500 million users and Twitter is closing in on 200 million, the Pentagon no longer has a single person guiding its communications shop on how to use social media to get the military’s message out. Gone are communication pro Price Floyd and technology exec Sumit Agarwal, the two men brought in during the past two years to get the Pentagon comfortable with online interaction in the 21st century.

Tweet Away, Troops: Pentagon Won’t Ban Social Media

As Danger Room reported yesterday, the Pentagon’s gotten rid of its social-media office [....] And the 2009-era policy that enshrined military access to social media — the result of a hard-fought internal struggle — expires on March 1.

[...] But [Pentagon spokesman Bryan] Whitman says that by March 1, what’ll be gone is the bureaucratic format for the policy (.pdf), to be replaced by a more permanent one — not the substance. [....] The policy will still give military members access to social media.

Some bureaucratic shifts may occur, but in terms of substance, “we’re not anticipating any changes,” Whitman says, as social-media use is “the way a predominantly young force communicates.”

Now, organizations often put the best possible face on internal developments, and it’s not hard to imagine the Pentagon really is dialing back its social media engagement.

But here’s the other possibility: that social media are now so ubiquitous, and so far-reaching, that it no longer makes sense to segregate them from other communications functions. The ability to post to a Facebook page or handle a blog comment is now just as fundamental to the work of an organizational communicator as the ability to bang out a pithy, effective news release. (If not more so.)

That’s the case made by assistant secretary of defense for public affairs Douglas Wilson in the first Danger Room post:

Wilson says using social media ought to be the responsibility of the approximately 100 people he oversees. “I was increasingly concerned our approach to social media was a stovepiped professional area,” he tells Danger Room.

“It’s important for people in press operations, community and public outreach and communications and planning to be able to know how to use and access Facebook, Twitter and the other social media tools, rather than just have a single unit or single person do nothing but social media.”

Of course, if the permanent policy ends up clamping down on military social media activity, and the Pentagon pulls back from its own engagement online, this will all ring a little hollow. But I’ll be surprised if that happens.