<p>The aim of this study is to contribute to the methodological development of social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) by using controversy mapping (CM), a qualitative social science method. CM is applied with life cycle thinking (LCT) to gain an understanding of what CM can add to S-LCA. The limitations of traditional S-LCA are that it rarely includes actors or social impacts that are not directly part of any product life cycle stage. Both methods can be used to study aspects of social acceptance, but social acceptance as an impact subcategory has not been widely applied in S-LCA case studies. To achieve this goal, a case study of the Finnish battery material industry was conducted using CM. Data were collected from local and national online news media and analyzed using qualitative coding. Currently, S-LCA often excludes important aspects such as local history-related social constructions and diverse actors focusing only on a narrow part of the product value chain. These aspects can be recognized with CM, which can be used as a complementary approach with S-LCA. The results indicate that social acceptance can be linked to multiple S-LCA impact subcategories and can be affected by the fairness experienced in social procedures. Thus, a separate social acceptance S-LCA subcategory is proposed. This study focused on social acceptance, but the social sciences also offer other opportunities for S-LCA development that could be studied in the future.</p>