There are several definitions for content from different perspectives? e.g., content refers to information and experiences that may provide value to an end-user/audience (Wikipedia), from another perspective, some definitions do not differentiate between the media and content.
What is the best acceptable definition for 'content' in the literature?
Content may be the opposite of form; a question opened very early within Russian Formalists ( from 1917, on). Naturally, many scholars have adopted it for further researches in the field on narration for instance. ( Such as Umberto Eco, for example). It goes without saying, that it is not the only semiotic understanding of the term. This, is due to a wider reflection in terms of the semiotic field.
There's many flavors in Semiotics, and you'll find that only some subscribe the idea of a "plane of contents" as the system that structures meaning in a code. For a general definition of it, I'd suggest you check "Semiotics and Language: An Analytical Dictionary". Some other disciplines dealing with the problem of "contents" have a very different view of this, and they don't see meaning as something derived from a code, so much as something put together "in situ" while we think and act. See for instance pragmatism (or Peirce's "pragmaticism"), contemporary cognitive semantics, or "agentive semiotics".
By the way, Greimas and Courtés' definition in "Semiotics and Language" places "narrativity" at the core of their "generative process" which is their explanation of the immanent structure of discourse generation.
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